Food for Thought

Yesterday the sermon at church was supposed to be on what it means to be a Godly woman.  I have no idea what the sermon had to do with women, but it was a great, thought provoking sermon.  She talked about finding contentment, ceasing to compare and basically counting your blessings.

Have you ever thought about why Eve ate the forbidden fruit?  Susie Davis’ take on this is that the Devil basically told Eve she didn’t have everything that she needed.  Isn’t that how we feel sometimes, that God isn’t supplying all our needs and so we look elsewhere to get what we “need”?

I saw this on Pinterest a while ago and while she didn’t use this exact phrase she definitely implied this.

Think about that, how true is this??  For Andrew and I this is absolutely true.  This is partly why I had to fast Facebook for Lent.  I looked at other people’s lives and lusted for what they have.  When I take my eyes off the Lord’s blessings in my life, it derails me and suddenly I’m discontent.  Susie asked the question yesterday, “What wrecks your paradise.”  For me (and I can almost venture to say for Andrew as well) what wrecks our paradise is comparison.

The last point she made that really hit me is what she said about stress. I’m going to get this somewhat wrong, but she basically said stress comes from managing our blessings.  She didn’t want to minimize people’s hurts and hard times, but most of us are stressed because of life’s blessings, even doctors appointments are blessings because we live somewhere that we can go to the doctor.  Taking your car to the mechanic is a blessing because you have a car and access to a mechanic.  This list goes ON AND ON.  Really think about what stresses you out and see if this holds true for you, are you stressed out from managing your blessings?

If you want to read more about this sermon check out Susie Davis’ blog by CLICKING HERE!

Making a list

Last week I made my Christmas list, or at least the beginning of a Christmas list and sent it to my mother.  It took me several hours to visit websites, cut and paste pictures and give her the links to the things I wanted.  when I asked Andrew what he wanted he was able to come up with ONE thing…wow we are different people.

Now to tell you a story about a list that has nothing to do with the first story, but I’ll bring them back together at the end of this post!  When I was in highschool I dated a guy who was somewhat uncomfortable with talking on the phone, after dating for awhile he shared a little something with me.  He used to sit down and write a list about things we could talk about while we were on the phone, that way if conversation would hit a lull he would have a topic to bring up and get the conversation going again.  He liked me enough to take the time to get to know me, write down things he wanted to find out about me and to be INTENTIONAL with me.

This has really gotten me thinking this week about my prayer life and meditation.  What if I was THAT intentional with God?  What if I made a list of all the things I wanted God to reveal to me about His character, or wrote a list of things I wanted to sit and talk to him about?  What if I took hours writing lists for God like I did to write a list of my selfish wants?  There’s a little food for thought for you today…chew on it!