Sing Praise

Music. One of the most powerful languages on earth. It's a language that everyone can speak mindless of where you are from. Together people from all around the world can sing praises to God and lift up his name on high.

Psalm 150:
Praise the LORD.

Praise God in His sanctuary;
   praise Him in his mighty heavens.
Praise Him for his acts of power;
   praise Him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet,
   praise Him with the harp and lyre,
praise Him with timbrel and dancing,
  praise Him with strings and pipe,
praise Him with the clash of cymbals,
  praise Him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD

Praise the LORD.

There is so much that we have reason to praise the Lord for and as Psalm 150 says, music and musical instruments are such a great way that we can express this praise and joy for His wondrous works.

How are you singing praises to God today?

Mentoring

I haven't posted on here in a very long while. I don't have any sort of excuse for that, it's just happened but I do think that maybe I should take this up again. I should start spending more time meditating on Gods word and also sharing my thoughts, it helps me process what I read a bit better.

Just now I read an article published in the Reformed Perspective, a magazine published in Canada that we get here a month or two after the publishing date. The article itself was on the topic of mentoring. 

As younger members of the church and society, we have access to a lot of information. Information that we can gain via a quick google search, or by spending time soaking up the incredibly informative information found on Wikipedia. Information is at out finger tips, but this information doesn't always help us in our walk of life. 

The article, written by Michael J. Schout and titled Be Mentored, emphasises the necessity of turning to others who are more experienced in their faith and more mature, spending time with them an learning form them. It was a really great article and I suggest that if you can get your hands on it have a read of the wisdom that it has to offer. 

Reading the fine print at the end of the article now, it was originally published in The Outlook (which can be found at www.refromedfellowship.net) in the Novermber/December edition hopefully that can help you find it.

Love one Another

Love. It's a theme that comes back every now and then through my blog posts, but it is also a theme that is central to our lives as a Christian. God has shown us Amazing love and grace, (as we read in Romans 5:8 - God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us), and because we live in that love we love our brothers and sisters in Christ. We know what love is because Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our bothers and sisters (1 John 3:16)

We respond to the love of God with love ourselves. Our hearts should overflow with thankfulness and love for Him and we show that in our actions. One example of the actions that we do would be in keeping the 10 commandments. These are summarised in Matthew 22 where Jesus says: Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. (vs 37-39). We love God and our neighbour. The two go together. Love for God for what he has done for us, and love for our neighbour because of what God has done for us.

In his book Generous Justice, Timothy Keller speaks about how it is only through our understanding of God's grace and in receiving of his love that we can give that same love to our neighbours. This is said in the context of providing justice and mercy to those in need but applies even more so to our church family. We have been shown the most amazing love, love that we didn't deserve, we must accept and understand that love so that we can show it to others.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34

Project 365 grateful

Several weeks ago I was reading a blog post from someone somewhere (unfortunately I cannot remember as to provide a link) and they were speaking of a friend of theirs who posted a photo onto Facebook each day of the year of what she was thankful for.

This gave me an idea. So often I too am not thankful for what I have. I grumble, am not content, and always what something better while I am really not in any situation to do any of that. I am so richly blessed. So now, using Instagram (which one of my friends has been strongly encouraging me to get for a very long time now), I am challenging myself to stop, think and then take a picture of something that I am grateful for.

To think about something that God has given me and to remind myself that I have no reason to complain at all.

I just googled '365 grateful' and came up with a lot of links to blogs and such but I still think it is a really great idea. It makes us all stop and think of what we have, what we are grateful for and how great  and awesome our God really is.

Risking All that we Have

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. "Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave gift out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on." Luke 21: 1-4

This story from Luke 21 is a illustration of complete dependance on God. An example of risking everything for God. This widow gave everything that she had financially to God, she risked all her money for the service of God. Reading this we may see her actions as irresponsible and foolish. However, we are called to take risks in the service of God. Life itself is a risk and if we want to serve God we must continually step further out of our comfort zone to grow as a child of him. We must continually take risks

Now I could keep talking about this but most of what I want to say would be paraphrasing what John Piper says on the matter. See the link below for his sermon on Ch 21 of Luke. There he talks about taking risks for the service of God, how we must take risks in our lives for the service of God, we don't need to be comfortable, but what we do need to do is to serve God in everything that we do, and to take risks for him. Financial risks, relationship risks and risks for ministry.

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/risk-and-the-cause-of-god-today

Training

"Train yourself to be Godly. For physical training is of some value but Godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present and the life to come." 1 Timothy 4:7-8

Training. Not a word that I particularly like. It's something that I would associate with discipline, hard work and commitment. Things that I find difficult (especially when they are put all together). At the moment I am trying to build my fitness up, I'm not training for anything in particular but I try to run or workout every day, and that is really hard. My lazy human nature doesn't like the idea of pushing myself to to extra work each day. In the text written above (1 Tim 4:7-8). Paul talks about the value that training in Godliness has for us. There is value in training our bodies but even more value in training our hearts and souls to be Godly.

In her book Having a Mary Spirit, Joanna Weaver talks about training in godliness. She makes the comment that we like to be changed but we don't like to be challenged. We would love to be fitter, healthier and (probably) lighter than we are at the moment but we don't want to work at changing that, all the commitment and discipline that comes with the training scares us away. Even more so, we want to live more godly lives but we are lazy and don't want to work at changing our current lifestyle. We want an instant fix.

Singular purpose

Today I took out some library books. Not that that is really that amazing of an accomplishment but what I noticed is that they are all due back on my birthday. That means, in exactly three weeks time, I turn 22. Depending on who you ask, 22 is either a young and with my whole life ahead of me, or if you speak to my youngest brother, really old.

Mindless, of the fact that I'm going to be old or young, the point of this post is the comments and ideas lots of people around me have about being single at 22. Yes I did go to uni. I now have a degree, have done some travelling and am hoping to begin my career. That doesn't mean that I don't want to get married or find an amazing guy to spend the rest of my life with. I'm not saying that I hear these comments from everyone around me, I have an amazingly supportive group of friends and a great family who don't drop these hints at all.

Still, it's something that I think about a bit more now than I did a year ago. Some of my friends think and talk about it even more than I do and as a result we all get that little bit more discontent with where we have been placed in life. So what do I say to them? What do I say to my friends who are yet again talking about meeting guys or finding a boyfriend? What do I say to the well-meaning people in my Bible Study group who make comments regarding 'single females travelling and focussing on their career'? What do I say when someone makes a comment about 'homemaking' in contrast to a career? What do I tell myself when I start to doubt the plan God has for me?

To be honest, I don't know at all. But what I do know is God has an amazing plan for my life. Right now that plan does not include someone else and that opens a doorway for a whole variety of service in a different manner. Right now I might not be serving God in the role of motherhood and for all I know that might not happen for a while, but I can still serve God as an active single member in the congregation, reaching out to those in need. I can serve Him in the work place, witnessing to others of the great God I serve and doing everything to His honour and glory. I have the time and resources to volunteer in my local community, helping people and giving of what I have. I have opportunities to minister to people in other countries as I don't have any big commitments here. There are lots of other ways in which I can serve God without worrying about who