Mercy

In our Bible Study every Wednesday night, here in the tiny little village of Elkton, we have been studying the book of Romans. Paul's letter to the Gentiles for the sake of the Jews. Or something like that...

Last night we talked about God's mercy, what that is and what it looks like. How it's effected our lives and how we would describe it personally.

Mercy and Grace go hand-in-hand; Grace is giving a person what they need in spite of what they deserve, Mercy is giving a person compassion when they deserve judgement.

God's mercy is beyond my understanding. His grace is so unfathomable... and that He wants to give these things to me when I make stupid mistakes and do the same sinful things over and over and over is... amazing. It's invaluable, it's precious.

In my life God's mercy has been so great and so constant... He not only saves me so that I can live a righteous life leading to eternity, He actually gives me tools to help me do it; and then He gives me more tools when I have a hard time with the ones I have, and then He sits me down and helps me figure them out when I can't do it on my own.

I just think... wow. It would be perfectly reasonable for God to save us and then let us figure everything else out on our own, even condemn us for not living perfect and blameless lives from there on out. But He's willing to do all the work for us... all He needs is our submission to His will: control of our lives.

It's such a simple little thing... and yet this one thing I cannot give over. I give it over and take it back again. And again.

In our Bible study we talked about a living sacrifice and what the difference is between a living and a dead sacrifice. The conclusion was that the living sacrifice gets up and walks off the alter at times.

We have to continually sacrifice our will to God because it doesn't die. It wakes up and gets down off the alter when left to it's own devices.

Thank God for His mercy!

"...The Reason I live is to worship You."

Lately... I have not been living like that is the reason I exist.

It's so easy to fall into habits. We wake up every morning and numbly stumble through our routine existence: I get up, blindly stumble into the bathroom where I somehow manage to adjust my eyes to light and get dressed. I go to the barn and fumble through the routine of milking the goats, filling feeders and getting goats in and out of the milking stands. Then I go up to the house and rush like a mad woman to strain the milk, fill the dishwasher, get a lunch packed, get dressed and dash out the door to get to work.
I come home and stumble through some more routines until it's bedtime, get up and do it all again.

Somewhere in the middle of it all I realize that I don't have a very good attitude. Gee, wonder why.

I will have a conversation with someone and they'll say something I don't agree with, or that seems nasty or something and find myself picking them apart in my mind hours later.

I cannot worship God and fault-find at the same time, it's just not possible.

I cannot blindly stumble through routine patterns day in and day out and live my life on purpose to worship God.

Now, that doesn't mean that all the routine things don't have to be performed. But I don't have to check my brain and heart at the door while performing. I worship God through the routines He has put and worked into my life. I could even make time for some routines that more directly involve Him

God has put me here to worship, honor and bring glory to Him in all that I do and say and THINK.

If I spent more time pondering that and less time picking apart things other people say, my routines could become infinitely more precious and worthwhile. They could become crowns that one day I will cast at the feet of Jesus!

They That Wait...

Lately I've been ... working. I get up and go to work and come home and sleep and get up and do it all over again.
While I love my job and am very happy to be getting all the hours I'm getting, it still gets rather monotonous.
Today on my way home I was driving along and thinking, something I do a lot of between the commute to and from Bend each day, and started feeling the monotony creeping in a little. I started feeling a bit impatient. Impatient for what? For the rest of my life.
I know this is where God has me at the moment, and in most ways I'm really happy with that. But it's hard to be content sometimes when I get stuck in a rut and feel like I'm doing the same thing every day, and the sin nature in me starts telling me that there is no purpose in it.
So then I get impatient with God and want the next chapter to begin. I start struggling, my spirit at war with itself over whether to calmly let God play the scenes of my life His way or not. It makes me tired.
Today I was sensing the struggle going on inside me (a lot of times this happens and goes on for some time before I become aware of it) and prayed.
Novel concept, right?? =]
Just a short, cry sort of a prayer. A, "PLEASE GOD!" sort of a prayer. And immediately, I mean, IMMEDIATELY, the verse, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount on wings as eagles; they shall walk and not grow weary, they shall run and not faint." floated through my mind like a whisper. I just contemplated it, and started, without realizing I was even doing it, to meditate on it. I went through the verse as a whole, then took it piece by piece. I got to "upon the Lord" before I realized He'd magnificently answered my prayer.
It was amazing. I thanked Him and continued mediating on the verse and peace just washed over me.
I have a purpose, I'm fulfilling it right now. It's called waiting upon the Lord. God promises that they that do shall renew their strength. I'm not sure what it means to mount on wings as eagles and I don't think I've ever felt like I could run a marathon, but I know God is renewing my strength because I'm not fretting anymore. It's a wonderful feeling!
I'm still tired and I still don't like being single and I still have to get up at six thirty and go to work tomorrow morning. But it's okay. God's got it and He KNOWS. He knows what He's doing and He has this amazing purpose in mind and it's got my name on it. And I'm okay with that.

Life Happening

I am twenty-five now... and it's a very sobering thought.

All my life I thought that by the time I was twenty I'd be married, with some children... and that my life would be entirely different.

I also assumed that by being married my life would automatically be fulfilled and that I'd be perfectly happy and content.

Consequently I spent many years in "waiting for my life to start."

Since then I have realized that being married does not and will not and CANNOT fix things that are wrong or broken to start with. Marriage will only amplify any problems or areas of discontent that I now carry.

But it's sobering to wake up on the morning of one's twenty-fifth birthday and to realize that one is halfway to fifty... and on top of that to realize that one has not accomplished things that one thought would be accomplished long before now. Yes, I am one.

But I am also very thankful for lots of things in my life now. I am very thankful that I am where the Lord has me and I'm thankful that I'm busy and not waiting.

I'm thankful I didn't get married before realizing the things I have come to realize, and that God has taught me so much that will eventually be useful to marriage some day.

I'm thankful that God is always teaching me and growing me into the person He wants me to become. I'm so thankful that I have waked up and am listening to His beautiful voice and am learning how to become a beautiful person.

So if I reach my thirtieth birthday and am still (God forbid!! =) unmarried, I will know that it's because I had more to learn and that I needed to become more beautiful. And perhaps that is all that God wants for me. And that will be okay, once I become more of the person I'm supposed to be.

I am very thankful for my twenty-five single years. I hope the next twenty-five will be even better spent in growing in my Lord and Savior: Jesus Christ.

A Few Things...

I have decided that there are a lot of things that I do because I want to or because I feel like it. I have also decided that feeling like it and wanting to are not very good reasons for doing things, in and of themselves.

For example, I have been writing posts on this blog of mine at whim, whenever I feel like it and want to. I'm not sure what to do about that. I don't think that's a very good reason for blog-writing, at least... when I started this blog I had a clear purpose in mind for it, and to write on it for such reasons as "feeling like it" and "cuz I wanna" defeats that purpose.

I have also decided that I really need some organization in my life... News-flash moment, yes?? =]
No, to be serious, organization is an area I'm extremely lacking in, whether from laziness or ... I don't know what.

I have also decided that I've been decidedly in the habit of, sort of just drifting along... through life... as though... I were an apple blossom... caught in a gentle, Spring breeze...

BLECK. I'm TIRED OF IT. I am tired of feeling aimless and blown about. That's part of the reason why I moved to Redmond in the first place, and here I am falling into my old pattern of behavior.

I guess it's not that surprising, seeing as what human nature IS after all... but I'M TIRED OF BEING HUMAN!
I feel like being a bit SUPER-human for once. I know a lot of people whom I would classify as seeming super-human. I am not one of them. Me-thinks it's time for a change.

...oof.
So. What does THAT look like??
Abraham, Joseph, Joshuah, Gideon, Daniel, Esther, the Proverbs 31 woman... I could go on. Again, "Oof."
Well, guess what's on my agenda? Try: Revamping Entire Self. For starters.

The Blessing Of Friendship

I have so many wonderful friends... God has blessed my life richly.

I have one particular friend who is rather more like a sister to me. Her name is Ronni (Riri, Ron, Ronaldo, or *gasp* her actual name: Rianna).

Ronni calls me periodically and I never answer my phone. So then she leaves a wonderfully enchanting, rambling and sometimes fairly garbled, but always very long, message on my voicemail. Then I'll call her back or sometimes she calls me several more times and anyway, eventually either I call and she answers or she'll call me for like the third time and I'll answer.

We talk. We talk for hours and hours and hours, unless she's on a fifteen-minute break or driving to a class. She tells me all the funny sories she's saved up for the past month or so (I never have any funny stories for her) and then we talk about our lives and what God's doing, or our frustrations.

I always try to fix all her problems, because that's what big sisters DO, right?? And I always come away feeling blessed by our discussion. We never small talk. She's too busy, for one thing, and we have way too much real stuff to talk about. She thinks about everything a LOT and I think about everything quite a bit, so we always have a lot of philosophizing to do with each other.

We always ask each other questions. Questions for the other person and questions we're struggling with ourselves. She is not at all afraid of REALLY HARD, SCARY, and sometimes yucky questions that nobody likes to deal with. I'm usually game for them, too, even if I don't always go searching them out and so we ask each other all these questions.

It's really hard to ask yourself hard questions without doing a lot of thinking about them and soul-searching and I find that having a discussion with Ronni helps clear out some of the cob-webs and a lot of the time it helps get me back on track or at least motivated to move in my walk with God.

Anyway, so that's Ronni.

Then there is the Mazur family. They are amazing. They have been friends with my family since I was like 8 or 9; we did homeschool together and piano lessons and AWANAs for like two minutes... anyway. This summer they invited me to come live with them.

So now I live in Redmond with the Mazurs. They have a dairy goat farm and Erin has Angora goats. I help milk two goats every morning and every evening and today I helped Mrs. Mazur clean out a stall in their barn and level it with dirt. Last month they put a lawn in in their back yard and we worked on it together for weeks getting it level, raking dirt, leveling some more, raking more dirt... yeah. It's been fun!

I had been living at home with my parents in the the middle of town in Cottage Grove; we had just moved the year before from Elkton where our church family was so we weren't going to a church. I kept the house clean and fixed dinner and did laundry and that was pretty much it. I stayed home while Mom went to work all day and Dad stayed in his office because that's what Daddy does.

Now I live with a family that is pretty much always around me; I attend their fellowship every Sunday (when we're home); there's always so much to do around the house and farm so I'm always busy/occupied with something. There's pretty much always someon to talk to so I'm not left to think to myself all day long.

I can't believe how much the Lord has blessed me with good friends.

I do get homesick, but that's nice in a way. It just means that I have a good life here and I have a family somewhere besides here that loves me a lot and whom I love, too.

If I Stand, Let Me Stand On The Promise...

"If I stand, let me stand on the promise: You have brought me through; and if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You. If I sing, let me sing for the joy that has born in me this song; and if I weep, let it be as a man who is longing for his home." ~Rich Mullins

Lately I feel like I'm spending way more time falling on God's grace than I am standing on His promises. So, I guess, it's really good He's provided that loving platform for me.

But why can't I get my act together???

Wouldn't it be nice to stand bold, with confidence, claiming and living the promises of God? Instead I feel like a weak and miserable worm - constantly mooching off the grace, love and goodness of my Savior.

I really think the problem is a lack of spending time in the Word, coupled with tiredness. Or possibly, the tiredness is caused, or at least exascerbated, by the lack of time spent in communion with my Lord... either way the case is clear: Lela is being lazy and stupid and needs a kick in her fanny.

I'm tired of falling on the grace; I want to start standing on the promises of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I'm tired of weeping and moaning within myself and basically spending most of my days in a vague and mist-filled sort of pity-party; I want to sing for the joy that has born in me songs of worship, love and adoration of my Savior.

He has done it. He did it on the cross, so that I could live.