Filters

My bible study tonight talked a little about filters. We were talking about how things, people, media, etc influence our views on life and how we need to control that influence with filters. Philippians 4:8 was our source topic and we went through many other verses as well. I am amazed at how easily we can fall prey to these influences and how attentive we really should be...Jaden's favorite restaurant in the whole world in 'the 99' cause he can recite the song he learned from commercials...he doesn't really remember what food he ate, or if he even liked it...but he loves to sing the song and it makes him excited to go eat there...Jacob is already self-conscious about the clothes he wears and is concerned about what others will think about it...it really is amazing. It makes me almost want to home school them like my cousin is doing with her kids and turn off the Internet, radio and TV at our house. I certainly cannot control all the content they get, even when I am trying to be vigilant. But, I guess that was a good reason for the study. If I can help instill some filters that my kids will know and use as they hear and are exposed to all of this stuff, at least they will be able to discern some truth and know what is not truth. Pray for us to teach them well and pray for the kids to learn about the filters and how to use them.

Prayer with Jaden

I have wanted to post this for awhile and just hadn't gotten to it. This is more just for me to remember and have record of it...
When you think of prayer you tend to think of being on your knees, or having your hands clasped head bowed down, etc. I don't know exactly how Jaden decided to do this, but as we have had our prayer time at night, he stopped holding my hands and started grabbing me in basically a hug as we prayed. There is something especially awesome about praying and hugging at the same time and I have him to thank for it. It is a neat thing that I love and will always remember.

Piercing the Darkness

Just finished this book by Frank Peretti. It was a continuation of the storyline in the book I read just a short bit ago called This Present Darkness. Enjoyed this one as much as the first. I hope that I can keep the presence of mind that I got from this book about how important prayer is to the spiritual warfare that is waged all around us even though we can not see it. I don't know if Peretti's interpretation of prayer is close to what is truly there, but I know that if it is important enough to God and Jesus to be throughout the Bible, then it should be even more important to me than what I currently show it to be through my actions.

This Present Darkness

Linda had told me about this book and I had enjoyed the co-authored book he did with Ted Dekker, so I read this one while on my flight today. What an awesome book. It really makes you think about spiritual warfare, our place in it, and the importance of prayer. Sometimes it takes reading something like this to wake you up to the calling we all have to be vigilent in our prayer lives. Not only is it amazing that God allows us to be part of His plan, but we have critical roles to fill...so, pray for your kids, your family, your friends. Pray for your church, community, country and anything else that the Holy Spirit prompts you on. You might never know the impact you had, but don't let it convince you that there wasn't one.

Serenity Prayer

As many times as I have heard the first part of this, I don't know that I had ever heard the second part...so, thought I would share it with everyone.

The Original Serenity Prayer
(Credited to Reinhold Niebuhr)

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

Investing in others

This topic has been on my mind lately and it came to me again yesterday when I was driving between offices and I heard this song...



One of the lines in the song says...and I became a friend a friend would like to have....
It got me thinking...with how busy I am with work, family and church, do I do a good job of investing in my friends? Giving them time, following up on stuff in their lives and praying for them on a regular basis are all things I could do better. After all, relationships, friendships, the experiences you have with people will matter way more than how your career went and what your house looks like. Like most of the rest of us (probably..), I will always need to keep tweaking my priorities to make sure that where I spend my time and energy aligns with where I want my investments in this life to be.

JAM on Wednesday Nights

Back in September, I started working with kindergarten aged kids on Wednesday nights at a church sponsored event called JAM (Jesus And Me). Outside of some work and travel conflicts, I have been teaching each week to usually around 5-7 boys and girls. It will run through the end of May, so it was a much bigger commitment than I realized (8 months minus one month off around Christmas) but it has been fun and challenging. As with my own children, they can be hard to handle and entirely too full of energy, but the moments when you do get them to quiet down and focus, or those moments when they get what the story is about are pretty special and seem to make the difficulties worth it. Here is a moment when they were all quiet and praying:





Hopefully, we will have a good night tonight as well and they will find the story of God feeding Elijah by having ravens bring bread and meat each day as amazing as I do.