Tuesday, January 02, 2007

• Lord unveil my eyes to Your new and glorious works in my life...

  ...and lead me, Lord, just lead me. Hold me in Your tender loving embrace.

  
  Hey everyone, thanks for all the comments! Welcome to the new year!

  Every new year, I do take time to reflect. It may seem cheesy to do so, but I think its good. I look back, and remember how much time I wasted, or used badly. Things I wish I hadn't said, and words I wish I hadn't saved inside my heart. Things I wish I hadn't done, or at least handled better. And times that I see my utter selfishness and complete sinful nature. Times where I pushed God out of the pictures and took control of the wheel, and then other times where I gave God the wheel entirely and refused to do any work. Its like a game of tug-of-war. God is on one end and I, on the other. God is constantly pulling at His end, doing His part, where as I, am usually slacking off and doing my own thing. The task isn't accomplished unless both sides are participating. And on myside, I've got Satan pulling behind me, whispering in my ear to just let go, give up. Go have fun. And in the end, I end up hurting myself.

  But also as I look back at the past year, I see how much God's hand has moved in my life. How He has so quietly but steadily molded me to be more and more like Him. Its such a comfort to know I am resting in His ever lasting arms. And to know that He is constantly walking by my side, and when I feel as though I've been left alone in the worst tempest of my life, He reminds me that He is there and is carrying me through the waves.

  I think that reflecting puts the lime light on the fact that there is always room for improvment. But we can't improve with out God's help. Without His direction, we'll continue to mess up. Its like we're blindfolded. Unless we let God take us by the hand and actually lead us instead of us trying to go our own way alone, we're going to just keep straying off the path and bumping into things and hurting ourselves more.

  I think New Years is sometimes really over rated. A lot of people are asking "What resolutions are you going to make this year?" I, personally, am opposed to resolutions. A resolution = a promise. But we have no one really to be accountable to, and resolutions are more promises to ourselves rather than to some else or to God so they're easier to break. Especially if they're just promises about stuff we really don't want to follow through with. Or that we know we can very well live without since we have so far. So what is the point of making a promise you know you will break?

  So instead of making more promises and basically lying to myself, I decided a while ago to rather make a list of things I'd like to accomplish in my life. These things range from spiritual, to not at all spiritual, from serious to crazy and fun stuff. Or just simple things. I haven't promised that I'll accomplish all of these, or made them impossible tasks. So its much easier and more fun to work towards them. If its just something like "Befriend someone you don't like", "Spend time with God in His word once every day" or even just "Stop biting my nails" or "Improve my posture", "Throw paint on a wall and call it Art and try to sell it", you'll be working towards something to better yourself or just to have fun. But its not so pressuring to get it done before the end of the year so you can make even MORE promises you can have fun breaking.

  When we make promises and then break them, we're causing ourselves unnessessary guilt since we shouldn't have made the promises in the first place. Especially if you KNOW you will break them. Its even worse if you think "Oh, if I promise GOD, I'll be sure to get it done then." People, this isn't going to make it any eaiser. We break the 10 commandments every day and sin in some way probably every couple of hours or less. How can we expect to keep a meaningless promise to Him? And secondly, when we break it, we'll be sinning just like we were when we made it.

  Also, as Christians, we sometimes get the twisted view that we can't have fun anymore. That we have to constantly be serious. This isn't true at all. I think we can praise God just as equally while having fun, laughing, enjoying being with family and friends, as we can being serious by praying, reading His word, going to church, etc. For Christmas, my family and I didn't make supper, instead we bought a ton of junk food. We didn't read the Christmas story (although it probalby wouldn't have hurt us if we had) but instead, spent time together talking and laughing and then went and watched a movie all together. We had fun and laughed a lot and did other enjoyable things. And even though we weren't being "Spiritual" we were still celebrated Christ's birthday and praising Him by being thankful for what He has given us. I'm not saying we should just have fun all the time, but there should be an equal moderate balance between each. I believe that when we laugh and are being pure in what we're doing, we make God laugh, and Him seeing us truely happy praises Him just as much as singing Worship songs, praying or reading the Bible does.

  And we can't be truely happy with out Christ. If we don't have God, there will always be a feeling of something missing and emptiness in our hearts.

  I've never claimed to be good with words, as I've said before. And I think I kinda messed explaining in the last part, so feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to clarify myself.

  Anyway, this year should be pretty amazing. There's a lot of things I plan to change and attempt to fix with the Lord's help this year. I'm sure this year will be full of learning experiances, struggles and triumphs, and new and interesting discoveries but always showered with blessings from God. May God bless you all as we dive head first into the new year.

  Happy 2007!!

  
  "If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast."

  Psalm 139: 9-10
  

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