Doing daily devotions has never been easy for me to continually do. I’ll start doing them faithfully for a week or two and then I get “busy.”
“If your too busy to spend time with God then your too busy!”
Well this past week I was once again too busy until Tuesday. I worked at our churches day care to fill in for a lady that was out sick. One of the teens from our youth group came in and excitedly told me that her and her friend had done their devotions for two days now and were going to help each other remember to do them on a regular basis. I was excited for their progress but felt about 1 inch tall at the same time. That night I was at the RU meeting and in the Challenge Group section of our evening Mrs. Judy, the ladies Group Leader, talked about reading her Bible and doing the RU challenges. She said,
“I can’t expect you all to do what I’m not already doing.”
Ouch! I’m constantly asking the teens if they’ve done their devotions. Then the final blow, the message at the end of the night. What was the message about? Prayer and Faithfulness… Now down to 1/8 inch tall I went home and asked the Lord for help in this area of my life.
With the Lords help I am starting again but this time with a plan. I finished the Proverbs 31 study, I had started on ROH, yesterday, and today I started a study on the book of James. The book is a Teen study guide that Kenny recommended. I’m also asking different Ladies, who are spiritual giants to me, to help keep me accountable in this area.
The thankful part of this post is that God is still working on me! I think it is always neat to see what God uses, or brings into my life, to direct me back to Him.
* I’ve had different people ask me why I blog about my “personal, spiritual issues.” the answer is that I want others to know that I’m not perfect, I have things that I struggle with and God is constantly working on me. I blog about these things because maybe someone else is “too busy” or has stumbled for another reason. My prayer is that they might be encouraged by my experience and that they don’t give up in their walk with God.
So what have you been doing in your devotions recently?
I’m one of those people who thinks Winter starts the day after Thanksgiving, Spring starts when the flowers are budding, Summer starts when school is out and the first day of Fall is the day after Labor Day. So… I’ve already put out fall decorations :)
I wanted to share this because I don’t think you have to spend an arm and a leg to do some nice, simple decorations – I mean really, your only going to have them up for 2 1/2 ish months.
The burnt orange table cloth and matching ‘fall leaves’ napkins I purchased at a yard sale for $2.00
The candles are leftovers from our wedding (I got the stand a thrift store forever ago) and the napkin holders were given to me by my Grandma.
And my patchwork, ceramic pumpkins as well as the fall “stick,The part of decorating I really wanted to talk about price wise though is the fall leaves. Now I bought these two or three years ago but you can buy a “vine” of fall leaves for $1.00 at just about any dollar store! I purchased 3 different vines and here is what I’ve used them for:
Around Candleholders…
In arrangements…
And on a plate around a Candle.
Very simple, in-expensive, fall decorating.
Happy Fall!
Well we had a great Labor Day at our house with my family. Everyone but my sister got to come up for the day for card games, good food and fellowship. But now I’m going to hurry and put out my blog post for today so I can tidy up my house – it doesn’t look anything like it does in the pictures right now :S
So here is the dining room:
And the Kitchen:
The shelf was made for me as a wedding gift – That I LOVE! Its my “thing that you have that has a million colors on it so it pulls all the colors in the house together” item :) Normally you would have a throw pillow or curtains, I have a shelf :)
As for the refrigerator, that is Command Central! I keep our menu and grocery list on the side with post-it© notes and pens and on the front are the pictures of my family (mostly of the nephews and nieces) as well as the big note board with a pocket on the front. The pocket is where i keep the 3x5 cards, one for each of our teenagers, so they are constantly on my mind throughout the day.
That's all for today, now time to go clean my kitchen! :)
