"...I shall not want..."

I am the poster child for issues with contentment.  I need to learn to walk through this world and not be fooled into thinking the 'next great thing' will bring joy and happiness.

The book I am reading now, Traveling Light, by Max Lucado, takes you through the 23rd Psalm..."The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."  It brought to my heart something that the Spirit had pointed out before - being content with what God has blessed me with NOW, not what I can obtain in the future.  Why is it that I find myself drifting into the deadly circle of dreaming of more money, a different car, house, etc, losing any joy I might have when those things do not happen, and then feeling discontent with what I have and where I am?  God forgive me for being so ungrateful.  Few things are as ugly as an ungrateful child.  It robs the joy of the giver and the receiver.

I am that ungrateful child.

Becoming Joseph

"...the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper." Genesis 39:23b

I wanna' be like Joseph.  I want to prosper in what I do.  Not always there yet, not quite.  And this is not Creflo Dollar or whatever prosperity-drive-a-Caddie stuff.  I want to be lined up in the tine furrows of God's plow, getting some weeding done and planting good seed.  I will let God tend to the harvest.

Right now, I think I am tending too many weeds.

Fear: calming the storm within

If jealousy is a green eyed monster, then fear is its dark grey cousin.  Not a legitimate fear, like one that keeps you from jumping from an airplane with no parachute, but the irrational fears that creep in and erode the foundations of our peace and joy.

That is me all over.  And over.  If the peace of God passes all understanding, why can't I get on the bus?  the book on my Reading List in the side column by Max Lucado speaks to this type of fear.  It is easier to read about then it is to defend against.  God help me, cuz my armor is tin foil trying to be steel.

Mark 4:35-41 tells about Christ calming the sea.  The passengers on the boat were in fear of their lives in a tangible way...the boat, the storm, the danger was imminent.  But Christ was there.  What could they have feared?  Nothing.

Christ is as present in this Christ follower as he was in that boat.  He is not worried.  Why am I?

Not the end, but the road...

"This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified."
— Martin Luther

Excellence worth striving for.

"We are what we repeatedly do, Excellence is therefore not an act but a habit."  Aristotle

If we are what we repeatedly do, then I strive to repeat being a man of prayer; a person seeking to reflect the Christ within by the way I walk through the world; a man after God's own heart.  I seek to repeatably be useful and usable for the purposes I cannot always understand.

And, if in the end I am excellent by habit, let it be excellent before God and His glory, not of my own, lest I should boast.