Scripture Reading for the day...

My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.
Isaiah 26:9 (New International Version)

God is sooooo good!!

I didn't get a chance to post about this weekend. I'll just say that I have learned to trust God more this past week than I ever. He has truly ordered my steps.
My ministry is moving to another level. I was given the opportunity to preach on Sunday, after a very stressful end of the week. It was the first time I preached from an outline instead of a manuscript. I let the Lord lead me and I just preached from my heart.

It is interesting how you will do things in life, thinking you have made a mistake...that maybe it wasn't God's voice that you heard. Then later, it ends up being a blessing. It might be years later. You never know how God is working things out.

I preached on trusting God. My Text was the 139th Psalm. It talked about God's character... His omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. He's all knowing, everywhere, and all powerful... We need to trust God in our lives because He knows all about us...Shoot he created us, so who best to trust with everything in our lives. I know I forget that God is God and want to try to figure things out for myself... Stupid!! The good thing is that God knows our thoughts and our words before we speak them... Anyway... Trust... Trust that He will make a way out of no way. He has done so much in my life. I just can't tell it all!! That's my testimony for the night!!

Wow!!

All I can say is wow... today my daughter told me that she talked to one of her friends who is Muslim. She said her friend has decided that she doesn't believe in God because she has no proof that He exists. This disturbed my daughter and she tried with all her might to convince her that God is real. She asked her if she has ever read the Bible and she said yes. Then she talked about how God blesses people with money and things and life itself and the girl still didn't believe her. My daughter was so frustrated! She is concerned about her friend and prayed for her before she went to bed. All this from a 12 year old! She sounded like her mother! Really! I didn't know she had it in her! (Let me find out there's a preacher inside of her... watch out!!)
I wonder how many adults would have had this concern for a friend of theirs... I am so proud of Sierra for standing up for her faith and being concerned for her friend. I guess I've done a good job after all with giving her a spiritual foundation... Wow... Thank you God for giving her all that she needed to say. Thank you for your Word, which is true... Thank you for my daughter, who loves you and is learning more about you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Pray for me!

I wanted to thank everyone who has been leaving such nice comments....I didn't know people were actually reading this stuff. I just hope that I can be a blessing to someone.

Please pray for me... I have to preach on Sunday morning. I'm trying to hear what He wants me to say. It's coming, but it's not together, and I'm on call tomorrow at work.
Lord, use me like You've never used me before...I love ya! Amen..

This is Our Story: 'When the Levees Broke'

I'm going to make sure I see this...

Katrina was a storm that washed up racism, cronyism, history, politics, poverty, how business trumps life, disdain for the poor, incompetence and all sorts of other national sludge. Another surprise was that Lee was noticeably absent from the screen. Known for his shameless self-promotion, Lee is mute here, saying about 10 words in four hours -- and never on camera (and you know he can't even stay off camera in his features).

Read the rest of the story at the link below...

http://journals.aol.com/bvmovieblog/BVMovieBlog/entries/2006/08/10/this-is-our-story-when-the-levees-broke/1471

Scripture of the Day

2 Corinthians 8:9 (NLT)

You know how full of love and kindness our Lord Jesus Christ was. Though he was very rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich.
Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 1997 . Tyndale House: Wheaton, Ill.

2 Corinthians 8:9 (Message)

You are familiar with the generosity of our Master, Jesus Christ. Rich as he was, he gave it all away for us—in one stroke he became poor and we became rich.
Peterson, E. H. 2003. The Message : The Bible in contemporary language . NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colo.

Here's lookin' to You, Lord

by John Fischer ((from Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional))
http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/devarchive.aspx?

Becoming like Christ seems like a daunting task, and it is, but there is a certain grace in its impossibility. Because we can never reach it in this life, this becomes a goal that will never stop driving us – a purpose that takes us through to the end. If it were an attainable goal, what would we do then?

This was certainly the error of the religious leaders of the day when Jesus was here on Earth. They thought their strict adherence to the requirements of the law had earned them a place among the righteous. They had arrived, in other words. Of course they hadn’t, and this was something Jesus was continually trying to bring to their attention. The only thing they had arrived at was their own interpretation of the law, which was sorely inadequate to produce the true inner character of righteousness that God is after. They were measuring themselves by a scaled-down version of the law and looking at those who they deemed worse than themselves in order to make themselves acceptable in their own eyes. Had they looked at Jesus, something very different would have happened.

When you look at Jesus, at least three things happen. 1) You realize your own shortcomings and how far you have to go. 2) You realize God’s love and accept the forgiveness made possible through Christ’s death for us on the cross. 3) You reflect his glory, not your own. It’s the only way you can still stand in front of his perfect righteousness and not be consumed – you receive, as a free gift, a righteousness you cannot earn. Looking at Jesus makes you humble and holy all at the same time. Not holy like the Pharisees, mind you, but holy in that you are totally counting on Christ for your own righteousness because you realize how much you lack.

Humphrey Bogart made the line famous in Casablanca: “Here’s lookin’ at you kid.” It was a special look – a secret he and Ingrid Bergman shared as unrealized lovers. In the same way we go through our day looking to Christ; it’s a secret we know about but not necessarily information shared by everyone. Our love for God and his love for us make up for the deficiencies in our character and the distance we still have to go to have Christ fully realized. And yet, as we keep looking to him, we begin to reflect something of him in our lives, and without even knowing it, we become like “mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) May we reflect him today in everything we do.

I hear you Lord!

Lord, I am so tired. You go on vacation just for a week and come back and the bottom just falls out of everything at work... My job is so demanding. I just don't know how I make it some days. Yesterday we had 4 nurses call in sick which left us with 3 nurses for 30+ cases. It was horrible. Plus, I was on call, so I had the potential of getting called in at any time. I got home around 10 pm, so I was cross-eyed. It is so true how God never gives you more than you can bare. I know I would have cried if I had to go in last night.

Today I was through, just so through with it all. Doctor's getting on my nerves, patients getting on my nerves, co-workers getting on my nerves...I don't think I have a nerve left. I really don't. I'm so glad I'm off tomorrow. It really gets to the point of whether I am being the best I can be for my patients. When you get so tired, you sometimes lose focus on why you are there in the first place. Without patients, I wouldn't have a job. Sometimes you begin focusing on your needs instead of the patients and families needs.

Sometimes this happens in ministry also. Things sometimes don't go the way you would like. People don't think like you think and you start to lose focus on why you are even in this thing. You take your focus off of God and things get all messed up. You think about how someone hurt your feelings and think about why you didn't get credit for all the work you are doing and God just jumps out of the way. He can't be in the same place as all of that. He becomes displeased. It's easy to lose focus.How can I break this cycle? How can I get back on track. I know today I just had to go off to myself, cry a little and ask God, what is it that you want me to do? I lost my focus for a second, but He regained it quickly... at least today, anyway.Thank you God, for smacking me around a little today. I needed the wake up call...

I'm Baaaaack!!

Well... we're back from vacation. I tell you, it has been much too long since we took a vacation. We will not make that mistake again... We ended up buying a timeshare! God blessed us with the opportunity to buy yearly vacations. The timeshare is sweet! I'm excited! We had so much fun as a family and we realized that this is what it's all about. We have been working so hard at living that we haven't stopped to enjoy life.
The ocean was beautiful and the air was so relaxing. It was like heaven on Earth. I believe that God wants us to have heaven on Earth. I don't think it is meant for us to suffer all of the time. Anyway, I'm all ready looking forward to my next vacation, because i've got a lot of work cut out for me starting next week...
God sure is good!