Ever Feel Overwhelmed?

I can't believe that it's half way through February, already!

If you've ever felt a bit overwhelmed at the massive amount of things you have to do (or want to do) and the amount of time you have to get them done, you might be thinking there's something wrong with the whole picture. I mean...have you ever questioned if there's got to be more to life than finding yourself perpetually caught up in a rat race of some sort?

Jason Sowell from simplyyouthministry.com wrote an article titled "Chaos," which shared the same feeling of a chaotic life. I've included a blurb and the link to the article, below:

chaos Recently I feel like my life is out of control. In the words of Mute Math, Everything around’s breaking down to chaos.” I struggle to keep ...

I know we can all take great comfort in knowing that while we don't have it all together (one of the points Sowell makes), God is always in control and remains sovereign over everything (a concept that is often times hard to grasp). Secondly, when seeking help and assistance from others (a second point that Sowell makes), we should ultimately seek God first.

Often times, I think we fill our lives up with too much stuff that life gets way too out of control. I've found that when I've got too much stuff filling up my life, I don't necessarily have God filling my life because there's no room. I also know that a lot of the chaos and complications I might find myself in have a lot to do with me allowing things to get the way they are. Therefore, I have found it vital to constantly evaluate what I am doing and why I am doing such things.

If you find yourself living a chaotic life, I think it can be a red flag for you to stop and do some evaluation. After you've looked at what you are doing and why you are doing them, seek God about the things you need to cut out of your life. There may be many times when there are things we should be focusing more on, but we find that everything else in our life is competing for our valuable time. If we're not careful, we can then begin to neglect certain things, which can have adverse effects such as a relationship with a spouse being strained or we'll find ourselves doing things that don't necessarily matter in eternity.

I'm not in any way suggesting a comfortable - or in some cases, a lazy - lifestyle is God's plan for our lives. I am suggesting that there may be better uses of our time. Sometimes saying, "No," to something - even if it might be hard to do so - is a route we need to take.

Healthful Resources for Parenting

Dr. Jim Burns of HomeWord - a ministry for building up families - recently released the January 2008 edition of the Good Advice Parenting Newsletter with a few articles to help parents.

Here are the links, a few excerpts, and additional points for the articles:

1) ABC & D of Nurturing Your Kids

A. Affirmation. An affirmed child is a secure and confident child. Most often, the difference between kids who make it and kids who don’t is one caring adult. Even if you struggle with your teenager, I challenge you to believe in them! Most teenagers suffer from low self-esteem – and I almost always see this in cases where teens struggle with their parents. Kids with low self-esteem tend to become irresponsible. They make poor decisions socially, in regards to drugs and sexuality – and academically. Kids with low self-esteem often act out rebelliously with their parents. Their move to a lower standard of behavior is often due to the way they perceive of themselves. Parents can make a huge difference in helping their teenagers become responsible by affirming them, praising them and believing (even in the midst of struggle) in the person they can become.

A note that I would like to add is being cautious with praise. Painter & Corsini (1990) caution against praising a child because it can be perceived as insincere. Furthermore, praise can actually discourage a child if it "implies a demand for continued high performance" (p. 39) that the child cannot continue. Rather, Painter & Corsini advise parents to encourage children because it is much more productive than praise for the purpose of fostering self-esteem and can be used regardless of how well or how poor a child does something (p. 36-39).

The important point is to really examine what you are communicating to your child and how you are communicating your thoughts to your child. If you praise, what are you really praising and how will it be received by a child both on the surface and beneath the surface of the message. If you praise a child for eating all the food on his or her plate, you may be fostering the child to think that he or she is worth something when they do eat all their food. This can be detrimental if that secondary message is received and can lead to health problems in the future.

2) Why Dating Your Spouse is Good for the Whole Family

3) Restoring Broken Family Relationships

6. Commit to regular one-on-one times with your family. This builds on the last commandment of intentionally working at relationship building. Schedule a weekly date night with your spouse and at least monthly appointments with your son or daughter – where relationship building can take place. These outings don’t have to be elaborate. For example, go out for a walk or for some ice cream.

From lectures in the Spring 2007 semester to a FamR 341 course, Professor Deutch provided insight into spending time with children. Deutch highly suggested that each parent evaluate the benefit of having weekly non-negotiable time with each child on a 1-on-1 setting for about 20 minutes (meaning that a child gets 20 minutes from dad and 20 minutes from mom each week). This gives children undivided attention with each parent once a week all to themselves. Whether it is tossing a baseball around the yard, playing a board game, teaching or playing a musical instrument together, or finishing a puzzle, making this time available helps instill security in the child that no matter what is going on, this is the time that he or she has with a parent (even if there has been a falling out recently). Try to engage in activities that require both parties involvement and interaction rather than activities that remove that aspect (such as watching a movie or TV show together). Also, let the child make suggestions as to what activity he or she would like to do and then come to an agreement. If the child wants to do something that you do not feel is appropriate for you time together, then express your concern and come to an agreement on something else.


4) Tips for Lightening Your Family's Load

5) Confessions of a Recovering "Helicopter Parent"

If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter, click here.


And to give credit where credit is due:

Painter, G., & Corsini, R. (1990). Effective discipline in the home and school. New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Things to Think About This 2008

We're not quite a month into the 2008 year, so before we get any further, I thought I'd share with you this article I found on the Lifeway website. The article is titled "Questions for a New Year" by Don Whitney.

The questions that Whitney asks can be a challenge and require that we all take the time to go into deep thought and prayer about how God wants us to focus on our life this year.

Here are the first 1o questions taken from the article:

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
8. What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?
9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in 10 years? In eternity?

There are 31 questions in all, so I suggest that you visit the article online. I just didn't want to overwhelm anyone with 31 questions right from the start. Only those with the courage to live as part of God's army need continue. Click here for the article.

One might argue that we should just live for today, and I definitely agree in living for today since today may be our last. But I think it's important to live for today with a focus for the direction that the rest of our lives will take us - no matter how far away that may be in the future. As Whitney points out in his article, God doesn't want us to be aimlessly living from day to day without regard to where we are going. We need to look to God for guidance each and every day of our lives. And we ought to evaluate and re-evaluate where we are and where God is directing us to be.

Timely Reminders

A few weeks have flown by since my last posting at the start of 2008. As time will continue to fly by, I think it’s important to remember how short life really is. There are a few Scripture verses I like because they help put life into perspective with regards to time.

James 4:14 (NIV):

“Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

Psalm 39:5 (NIV):

“You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man's life is but a breath.”
Selah

Pslam 103:15-16 (NIV):

15 As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

Our physical lives are temporal regardless of how many years we may live. (I know I still have times when I’m waiting for something and time seems to go by really slowly. Sometimes a time period like a year seems like such a long time, but in reality, we can never recapture a moment and we can never slow down time when it seems to slip through our fingers.) However, we are also reminded that while our physical lives are temporal, our spiritual lives are eternal. The Bible promises us that we can find eternal life in Jesus Christ.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 3:23, NASB).

And this brings us to the foundation of my blog...

23 ”Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24, NIV)

Happy New Year...2008!

As we enter this new year, I pray that it's going to be filled with God's blessings each and every day. I find joy in knowing that God's mercies are created new for us each morning (as we're reminded of in Lamentations 3:22-24) and I hope you do too.

At the start of every year, I hear people make new resolutions. The coming of a new year brings hope for many that they can start fresh with new beginnings. This can be looked at as a testament to the desire for change - to make things right, to make things better. I'm sure most - if not all - people don't start off their year thinking about how they're going to make things worse for themselves. Rather, there seems to be this courage and hope that a new year means renewed focus and strength for a better life. And we know that true life comes through Jesus Christ alone and in picking up our cross daily to follow after Him.

So, with this new year, I just wanted to remind everyone of God's promise to us that we can start off each day fresh and new. After all, we only have today to live. There's nothing we can do to change what has happened in the past and we cannot know everything that will happen in the future.

Be encouraged today and everyday that God is God and we're not. Be encouraged that when God is all we have left, He is all we will ever need. May today be another new day that we rise up to the cause of Christ and pick up our cross and follow Him.

Happy New Year!

Music: Undo by Rush Of Fools

Following my post on Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, I wanted to share my thoughts on a song, which relates to the story line of the novel and God's redemption story for us. For me, "Undo" by Rush of Fools is a song I've offered up to God as a prayer when I've reflected on my life - knowing how imperfect and undeserving I am of God's love and forgiveness.

The lyrics for "Undo" speak of seeking God's divine help after falling away from God and living a life worse than a prodigal son and living a double life of a hypocrite and hiding the sin.

I know I can testify on my behalf that I've found myself guilty of making that journey back to God on more than one occasion. I know I've messed up and repeated the same offenses over and over and over again. Yet, I've come to realize that you can't keep hitting yourself over the head with the guilt of being a repeat offender - it's more of a tactic the enemy uses against us to keep us from moving forward and embracing the full redemption of Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross for ALL of humanity for ALL sin. Sure, it's no excuse to sin, but it is a call to start on the journey towards repentance.

Angel, the prostitute in Redeeming Love, makes the journey back to her husband, Michael Hosea (the farmer), on more than one occasion after leaving him. I know I can relate to Angel making that journey back to Michael when I think of those times I've had to make the journey back to God. In the past, I've kept asking myself if this would be the last time. Then, I would humbly realize that I can't do this myself...on my own strength...on my own abilities, and the only way out is for me to give everything over to God and trust in Him to undo the mess I've made of myself.

Even the act of forgiving myself has been impossible for me to do on my own and it has been an ongoing process as I discover the true reality of God's forgiveness and gift of redemption.

I've included the music video for "Undo" here.





To visit the Official Site of Rush of Fools, click here.

If you would like to read the story of the Prodigal Son (or Lost Son), it can be found in Luke 15:11-31. Again, I highly recommend that you at least start off with a translation of the Bible that you can understand and comprehend.

2 Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

------

8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
(Psalm 103:2-5, 8-13, NIV, bold face added)

Book Review: Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

I wanted to start off this blog on a radical note by recommending, Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, a novel I found to be a superb read (outside of the Bible...of course).


A friend of mine highly recommended that I read Redeeming Love. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how I would take to reading - as far as I can recall - my first romantic novel, but I took her up on her recommendation.

Well, I just finished reading this awesome story of God's unconditional love, and I found that from cover to cover, I had a hard time putting this book down. This was not what I imagined a romantic novel to be like. In fact, the story contained in the pages of Redeeming Love is the same story contained in the Bible of God's unending love for each and every one of us.

Rivers does an exceptional job of retelling the story of Hosea using characters set around the mid-1800s during the Gold Rush. The deep emotions and struggles of a prostitute and a farmer come to life in this book and reflect God's forgiving and redeeming character that never changes no matter how unworthy our lives may seem.

If you haven't read this novel yet, I highly suggest you pick up a copy for yourself.

On a further note, if you're not familiar with the story of Hosea, I suggest you take a look at the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament of the Bible before you read Redeeming Love. Hosea is classified as a Minor Prophet and contains 14 chapters. As with reading any book of the Bible, I recommend that you find a translation you can understand (at least to start out with).

My First Post

Welcome to my Blog!

Thanks for checking this blog out...I'll be working on it and adding content soon, so stay tuned and check back frequently for updates. I'll be working on getting some reviews up for resources and sharing ideas that may help for growing your faith, sharing your faith, and with various types of ministries.

I hope that you had a very special and merry Christmas season. As the year comes to an end, I hope you'll have a very blessed new year. Remember that every good and perfect gift comes from our Father in heaven (James 1:17), so thank Him.

God Bless...