To start, I find this fairly amusing. I visited my Facebook today and clicked on the link for this page and Facebook blocked it, saying it had been identified as a malicious site... Say what?
At any rate, I apologize to those of you who actually come here. Life has been busy and there is no excuse. Lord willing, my writing deficiency is over and I will start writing here again.
Two things I want to cover today, and then tomorrow we will begin the 'devotions' (see item 2).
Item 1: Surrender.
Christians hear this word alot. It riddles our hymnals and rings from our pulpits. It speaks of sacrifice, of giving up our hopes and dreams, of carrying our cross and denying ourselves. All very true points of surrender. The aspect I would like to discuss is the surrender that just says, "I am willing."
Surrender doesn't always involve a specific thing we are called to release. Sometimes it involves simply being willing to be used. This is the attitude of surrender. I am willing to be used and if I am willing to be used then when God asks me to 'surrender' something, my heart will have already surrendered it.
More than that, I believe God rewards the attitude of surrender. For a good year or so, I have gone back and forth with my writing. It's not that I don't love to write. I could write until the cows come home. It's the fact that I just can't see my writing ever reaching beyond my blogs and an occassional published piece of poetry. So, I get scared, scared of being used. Stupid when you think of it, but the honest to goodness truth.
I feel peace only when I have a moment of brokenness and I say, "Ok, God, this is Your call, not mine. If you want to use my words, they are Yours." When, I do that, things happen. The first time I did that, this blog was noticed out of nowhere by my youth pastor and is used as a discipleship tool for the girls in my youth ministry.
Then I decided I no longer wanted to be used in that arena. I took control of my words and my ministry suffered. When I surrendered again, I was asked to write devotionals for the youth group. Just tonight I was able to pick the courses I would like to edit for the Setting Captives Free ministry.
Has anything changed? Not really. Have I suddenly become a better writer? No, certainly not. Have I had to give up writing? No. I just had to be willing to be used. Believe me, it is harder than it looks and I struggle with it every day.
Every morning when we get up, we have a choice to make. We can either say, "God, this is Your day" or "This is my day." Every decision we make we can say, "God, just use me however You choose" or we can say, "I like this choice, so I want to go with that one." Day by day, moment by moment seeking the will of God. That is surrender.
Item 2: The Psalms.
Writing devotions for my youth group started as part of a 30 Media fast. They just haven't stopped and the 30 days is well since over. Yet, I love it, because it challenges me to search Scripture.
A couple days ago I was really struggling with what to do for devos. I wanted something to challenge the young people to search the Scriptures for themselves. I opened to Psalms and an idea popped in my mind. In keeping with that idea, I will begin to cover the Promises and Principles in the Psalms. There are lots and lots of Psalms so please know that this might take a while!! :D I am very excited to do this study. I have never done it before. I have challenged the youth to go through each Psalm and highlight the verses that refer to God in one color and the verses about our actions in our relationship to God in another color. In the end, we should have a neat picture of who God is and how we can better relate to Him. I am super excited.
So that is what will be happening on here. I will do my best to make it daily, but can make no promises. I really hope that you will join us for this study. It should be good... isn't God's word always?
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