Praise and Worship

Anyway, i hope i'm doing this right. i started it once and it went somewhere so i may have a half a post show up somewhere. i'm really posting this to keep myself accountable. i struggle daily with Paul's way of "joy in all things" when things don't go my way. ...and believe me, things haven't gone my way since december 29th. it seems like everyday there's one more thing (at least one more thing) to add to my list of 'things to tick me off'. God's really convicting me of this, so i 've recently started a morning study/devotional on praise and worship. We were created to worship God. I'll bring my notes tomorrow and back up this statement! :)
Anyway, to help me keep my daily study on my mind all day...i'll involve ya'll. todays focus is to praise God because He is the Creator. He created me, you, everyone...and He doesn't make mistakes. When someone gets on your nerves today, remember that God created that person. When you're driving home notice everything that He created and praise Him for it.
When you get home, kiss your family that He created....you get the picture.....God bless you all...xxoo

Venting!!!

Please forgive me but I need to vent for a minute. My son had a basketball game Thursday night. This is fifth grade basketball! These kids are 10-11 years old. There was a kid on the opposing team with a total attitude problem. This very same kid fouled several times and he got a technical foul. That's right, a technical foul! A fifth grader had a technical foul called on him because if the way he was talking to the referee. A 10 or 11 year old!

What is wrong with today's society, that we have children that young acting like that? If that was my son he would have been off of the court before the ref had a chance to call a technical foul against him. There is no call for that, at home or in public.

None of us want to have to discipline our children, but if we don't discipline them and teach them right from wrong, how will they ever learn. They won't! Parents, We all need to get up off of our rears and do what is right! Our children will not die. Sure they may be mad at us for a while, but they will get over it!

Proverbs 22:
6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Proverbs 23:
13 Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die.
14 Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

Prayer Request & Praise

My heart goes out to the family who lost the kids this past week in a car accident involving a bus and semi. I have no idea what the family must be feeling with the loss of their children and grandfather/dad. God, please reach out to this family!

Praise God thet there were no more fatalities and that the kids on the bus are o.k.

Thank You God!

I just want to take this time to give thanks to God. Last night at church we talked about remembering the past. The main point of the discussion was that we need to remember where God has brought us from in regards to our lives before becoming a Christian. However, my mind started wondering to those things that He has done for me while walking with Him. So many times we forget how we have come to where we are and what God has done for us along the way.
I remember back to the time just after my wife and I got married. It was very tough just starting out, but God pulled through for us. People brought food to us all the time. People helped us pay rent. My brother-in-law, who lived next door, let us tie into his house phone line so we could use his phone. My job pretty well boomed right off the bat. I was not paid much on the hour, but I could work all the hours I wanted.
Some would dismiss all of those things as "family helping out", but all of those people were believers. I just want to thank God for providing for my family in all the ways that He has, even through other people!

Co Workers

So, we are supposed to live our lives as Christians everywhere. Even at work! And we are not supposed to sin in our anger. Lord forgive me today for slipping up in My Christian life.

What do you do when your co-workers push all of your buttons, then one day push that last button and you say "I'm done with that person"? It is Biblical to seperate ourselves from the ones who do not choose to live a Christian life. But if we do seperate ourselves from those people how do we witness to them? Is by example enough? And when you make that distinction that you are done with that person, and they say "I thought you trusted me more than that", then what do you do? What do you say? Or do you even do anything at all?

That has happened to me this morning! I won't go into details, but a person has done something that you just don't do. Now the person says that I don't trust them, which could not be farther from the truth until this morning!

Lord let the right people share the right words to help me through this feeling of hurt!

Do You Smell That!

I just wanted to share this with all of you. It has been around for a while. When God tells us to come to Him as a little child, I think of this story!



A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. "I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could.
"There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one." Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.
But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain." Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

So There I Was!

For those of you who don't know I have been fighting what I believe to be sinus headaches for the past few days. Today, Tuesday, was the second day I stayed home from work. I called the doctors office and our doctor was not in today. His nurse told me that I needed to go to the emergency room at the hospital, so I did! I am so tired of being sick, and it seems like I am sick all of the time.

As I was laying there in the emergency room waiting for x-ray results, an older woman come in. I remember her saying that she was in her late 40's, 48 I think, and that she had taken a whole bottle of Tylenol Sinus medecine. I didn't here a lot, but I did here the doctor asking some questions, and she said that she has had a very bad year. She said that she had lost her dad last April, and that she was on all kinds of medication for depression and such. Some of the medication she was taking I am also taking. She said she had no children and that she lived with her mother.

As I was laying there, and since then, my mind goes to the thought of my own little problems. Here I am, poor me being sick and whatever, and here is this lady who has had it so rough that she is ready to end it all! Friends, my heart goes out to this woman, and I ask that you would pray for her with me, that God might reach her heart and life and show her that there is so much worth living for.

I have not shared this with very many people, I don't know if I have even talked to my wife about this, but there was a time that I thought my life would be better off if I didn't go on anymore. God has shown me different. To be able to watch my kids grow up and play sports, or just turn another year older. To be there for my dad when my mother was having difficulties after surgery. To be by the side of my wife when there are trouble times that she is going through. I wouldn't change that for the world.

You see, I don't know why I was there in that hospital room today, but I know that God allowed me to be there for a reason, and what ever the reason, I hope that He has used me and will continue to use me in whatever way He sees fit.

Let's roll people. We as Christians need other Christians to help us on lifes journey. Let's help each other, and let's let ourselves be helped by other Christians that we may all stand before God one day and here Him say, "Well done Thy good and faithful servant".