Some of you may know that I am currently taking a free course called The Book Marketing Challenge this month. 31 days of learning various aspects of book marketing and promotion. The first week had been about building your platform, covering such things as having a Facebook author page, being on Goodreads and Shelfari, having a blog, and tips and ideas on using those to their full advantage. Last week discussed various ways to build your newsletter mailing list and this week has so far been about building a business around your book.
Today’s subject matter was talking about repurposing existing content. One co-worker has told me that she’d buy my books if they were turned into audio format, because she doesn’t find time to just sit and read. I recorded a segment last week and ran it past a blogtalk host who loved it! She even suggested my voice might be good enough to farm out to other authors’ projects, which means researching what I’d charge for such a service. In addition, I have my e-course being reviewed right now, and when it’s ready, it will be the content of my tiny ebook “Practical Thoughts on Becoming an Author” repurposed into course format. Look for an announcement on that front in coming days.
Needless to say, I found the information in today’s session to be quite timely! This discussion has reminded me of authors who have gone on to build entire ministries based around their book. Their book became the platform God used to reach others in significant ways. In a manner similar to Paul’s tentmaking to fund his own way through ministry, an author’s book and income streams built around it, can fund his or her way through the ministry God gifts them with as well.
Will my books become a ministry? Who knows. . . Only God knows the answer to that. But the validations starting to come in about various aspects of my writing are totally jiving with this week’s content in the Book Marketing Challenge. In the book of Exodus, God told Moses that the Egyptians would give in to their hands as the Hebrews fled Egypt. Sure enough, when that fateful night came, the Egyptians gave them the riches of Egypt as they left the land. The smart Christian who has been given a specific gifting, will use the bounty of the proverbial Egyptians to further their particular corner of the Kingdom of God. I am, therefore, quite encouraged this morning by what I am learning and the encouragement I’m getting, to move forward in areas I’d previously been hesitant about. I am learning that others appreciate my speaking voice as well as my singing voice. I am learning that there are other ways material I’ve written can be offered to those who would buy it one way but not another.
God has given me these giftings, and it is up to me to pay attention to how best to utilize them and then both learn and implement those lessons both for my own sustainability and that of the message God gave me to publish.
So I’m sitting here quite decidedly going “wow!” Once again I am sensing change in the wind, but for once, I am looking forward to it! I haven’t been able to say that for a couple years now, so it feels good to look into the face of change and feel excited for what’s coming down the pipe!
We’ll see how the rest of this free challenge goes. If you want to join in, you can. All previous days’ content will be available to you. There is a gold membership if you want it. It’s for those who want the content not otherwise available to us free silver members. Here is the link if you’d like to check it out for yourself. I know I’m benefitting from the content.
Didn’t have time to do any journalling about today’s session till tonight, but it is well worth journalling about. As I looked over the list of suggested activities for engaging in “me” time, I realized that one particular thread worked its way through all of them. This was a list of activities for something we used to call “rest”. In the “old days” as some like to call them (and long before my time), people used to work hard to provide daily necessities for their homes. The men worked the fields, hauled in the wood, hunted the game, killed the cattle, and provided for the well-being of their families. Women spun, wove and sewed clothing, processed the fruit and vegies, cooked and cured the meat, did housework and also provided for the well-being of their families. But it appears from literature passed down to us from those times, that even though they had far fewer conveniences and many things took longer to do, families took time to rest. They rested in the evenings after dinner-time chores were done. Men took their sons fishing and women knitted or read books or wrote poetry. Granted these observations are very generalized, but overall, they had learned not only how to work hard, but also how to rest from their labours and recharge in whatever form suited them best.
In Scripture, we see God creating for six days and then resting on the seventh. We are later told in the books of the Law, that God did this as a pattern that we were to follow. God would tell the Jewish people that they could work six days and then they were to hallow the seventh day and keep it holy. Between the Jewish people maintaining this directive, and the early church beginning to meet on the first day of the week, culture eventually developed in Europe and by extension, North America, into a 5 day work week and a two-day weekend. Of those two days of the weekend, one was picked to catch up on tasks that couldn’t be done while working the rest of the week, and other day was picked to actually rest and spend time in God’s House. Whichever day was chosen depended on your Jewish or Christian persuasion.
While we still have “the weekend” in principal, we no longer have it in practice. The secularization of society has done away with any kind of day of rest, and the health of individuals, families and society as a whole has begun to suffer because of it. Mental breakdowns were far fewer in decades past, as were instances of people “going off the deep end” or “snapping”. Cases of physical breakdown caused by high continuous stress levels were also far fewer in number years ago inspite of the apparently higher levels of personal effort to achieve what we can do today with all our modern conveniences.
Does this mean our modern conveniences are bad? Not necessarily. In and of themselves, they generally do make life easier, but the concept that convenience would lead to more family time and more rest and recreational time has proved to be a lie. The reason for the lie is that rather than let these conveniences free up time, we have instead realized, “Hey! I have more time to get this done, do that, fit in this appt and add that to the schedule!” In this way, we have allowed modern conveniences to enslave us to the illusion of more time, rather than having those conveniences serve our need for more time.
Modern science is now validating the fact that scheduling in time for rest actually has beneficial effects on the mind and body. When we have decent moments of rest, we feel better, our mood is lifted, our minds feel less cluttered, our bodies seem to have more energy and as a result, we are generally happier and better able to handle what life throws at us. God knew this when He dictated a day of rest for His people. Our bodies are not built to handle prolonged high stress levels. This author alone has found herself in recovery mode after her own body began to give out under it all over a year ago now. I have had to not merely schedule in rest time every week, but slow down the work schedule as well. At one point I was even considering changing my career because being in tech support can be high stress at times. Figuring out how to work from home more often has also been on my mind, and I have a few ways to enable that to happen if enough marketing and promotion can take place.
The reason scheduling in time for rest and relaxation sounds like “me” time, is because it takes us out of the public picture for awhile. It removes us from the matrix for a time and therefore out of reach of others and their wants and needs. For those of us who are drawn to serving in some fashion, the idea of being removed from those who might need us is a difficult pill to swallow. But an entire industry has sprung up around this need to recharge and obtain that necessary time of refreshing. I speak of the spa/massage industry. When a friend goes for a massage, what do they say when they come back? “Oh that felt so good! It was so nice to get away for a little bit and treat myself to such luxury!” The reason it seems like a luxury is precisely because society as a whole has forgotten how to rest. Those that do make it sound very self-indulgent causing the rest of us to merely dream of such time while recoiling at the thought of engaging in such self-indulgence ourselves.
In reality, there is nothing self-indulgent about taking time to draw aside and rest. Every single person alive needs time to rest, time to refresh, time to rejuvinate both body, mind and spirit, and time to recharge to take on the world again. For the Christian, this is a big reason not to rush personal devotional quiet time. Let it take half an hour, let it take an hour, let it take however long is necessary for you and God to not only meet together, but for your spirit mind and body to be recharged, refreshed and renewed. The Christian doesn’t need to turn to expensive self-indulginces, eastern mysticism or other means to get these benefits. The Christian need only turn to the One Who longs to be their source of quieting, rest and refreshing.
Fellow author, Abby Lewis refers to this as, “Living Still” and she covers this concept extensively in her book by the same title. She goes further by offering this concept as an attitude and a mindset toward daily life as well. The concept of finding rest in Christ is what the New Testament is precisely referring to when saying that those who live in Christ enter into His rest. This thought is found in the book of Hebrews. For the Christian, life lived in Christ is meant to be more at rest than life lived without Christ. We are to hand over our cares and worries and let God handle them, being obedient to how He directs us through them and wise with the resources He gives us, which includes our time.
I admit struggling with the concept of “me” time, with the concept of slowing down to look after myself so I can be of greater service to those around me. But this need for rest and all the benefits God foreknew to be required of the human body, mind and spirit, are not to be denied or contested. Christ regularly drew aside to spend time with just Himself and God the Father. Should we not follow His example and as Christ’s invitation extends, find rest for our souls?
Today is one of bothersome dismay. There is dismay that is passing, just a small concern or disappointment at something that a person said or did. There is dismay that can lead to disillusionment, leaving the person totally aghast that someone could even think of saying or doing a certain thing. But then there is truly bothersome dismay that not only does a person think, say or do something, but teaches or encourages it as well.
My ability to give a high rating to this devotional by Spellen has just dropped to three stars or less. That is pretty harsh from where I sit because it means that what is being taught does not hold up against Scripture as well as it should and that what is being taught is either not the whole counsel of God, or potentially going against the whole counsel of God.
In this instance, the author has begun the day’s devotional talking about the body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. This in itself is quite correct. However she makes two errors in encouraging the reader to treat their body wisely. The first error is far more minor than the second and relates to what we eat. Not everyone will agree with her suggestions, and I am one of them. God made us omnivores following the Flood, way back in the book of Genesis. So the nutrition fad encouraging everyone to go vegetarian or worse, to go vegan, does not fit with how God granted meat for food in Scripture. This however, is generally a personal choice between any given person and their doctor or nutritionist as to what their body needs and how best to provide for those needs.
The second and far more serious error relates to the author’s choice of encouragement with regards to exercise. She actually, and quite casually offers the suggestion of Yoga as a valid way for the Godly woman to look after her Temple. This is wrong on several counts:
1) We are told in both the Old and New Testament not to engage in worship the way the heathen do.
Deuteronomy 11:16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
Jeremiah 10:2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
Now at first glance, you may wonder why this particular point is being brought out and why I’ve only mentioned two Old Testament verses when I said that the New Testament warns against this as well. These two verses directly relate to the discussion of Yoga, because of the origins of Yoga and it’s current practices today by those who truly know what it is about and what is happening not just physically, but spiritually when it’s various poses are assumed. There is much talk in the Western church and in Western culture in general, purely about the physical benefits of Yoga, and some church pastors have even tried to merge the spiritual aspects together. I can’t find it now, but earlier this past year, I read a lengthy blog post by one pastor who was hesitant to write it at first. He didn’t want to wade into the Yoga debate, but eventually felt compelled by his own experiences with the practice. To research his concerns with what happened to him, he went to Yoga experts, all speaking quite positively about the practice, to get a better understanding of this so-called form of exercise “from the horse’s mouth”. While trying to dig this up again, I ran across two similar blog posts on the subject and tried to share them here for your admonishment and warning in 2014:
http://pastormark.tv/2011/11/02/christian-yoga-its-a-stretch
https://wheresgodinallofthis.wordpress.com/tag/hatha-yoga/
Unfortunately, those links are now dead and you are unable to click through.
Both these links quoted experts as well, and show the reader that yes indeed, engagement in this form of “exercise” continues to be a form of worship to other gods, whether the practitioner believes that or not! So if we are told not to worship as the heathen do and not to practice their ways or engage in acts of worship to other gods, we should take these experts seriously and withdraw any such participation. Please take a few moments to read each of those links as they contain information well worth your time to consider in this discussion.
2) Because of the nature of Yoga being that of a physical act opening the spirit to the spirit realm, engagement in this activity places the Christian in a needlessly vulnerable position, wide open for exploitation by the enemy of our souls! I have listened to friends in years past who used to be involved in other forms of occultic practices, discuss what would happen if they emptied their minds. It wasn’t pretty let me tell you! When God’s Word speaks of meditation, it is NOT talking about emptying one’s mind as in eastern mysticism’s various teachings. Meditation in Scripture refers to mulling over Scripture and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring that Scripture alive to one’s heart and soul. There is a world of difference there! We are to have on the Helmet of Salvation, not take it off and set it aside for awhile each day.
Psalms 49:3 My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.
Psalms 104:33-34 I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. 34 My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD.
Psalms 119:97-100 MEM. O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. 98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me. 99 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. 100 I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.
Psalms 119:48 My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes.
Psalms 119:148 Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word.
1 Timothy 4:15-16 Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. 16 Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
3) The very fact that our bodies are considered by God to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit means that these bodies can be inhabited by more than just ourselves. These bodies are indeed, biological houses as illustrated various times throughout the Bible.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Matthew 12:43-45 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
1 Corinthians 3:16-21 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. 18 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 20 And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. 21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. 13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. 14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. 15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. 16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. 17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. 18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. 19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
2 Corinthians 6:14-17 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
Notice how Scriptures talk about our bodies as houses and temples? Notice who is capable of moving into those houses and temples? Notice the dangers and the admonishments given. How do we glorify God by engaging in worship to demons?
This is a huge black mark on an otherwise really good set of devotional thoughts so far. I am incredibly dismayed to find this on Day 18 of this study and as such will not be able to recommend this book even if the remaining 13 sessions are as upstanding as the first 17. I simply cannot condone the encouragement of a practice that could very well trap, or worse, draw away a child of God from the faith.
So many good and useful, not to mention actionable admonishments in this 31-day devotional by T.C. Spellen! Yesterday she talked about de-cluttering your life and today she spoke of living simply.
Clutter is something that can build up quickly and seemingly out of nowhere! I know this first-hand because I live in a small apartment with two grown children. We don’t have a storage locker, and very little storage areas in the actual apartment itself. This means that periodically, we go through the place and make a run or two to the local thrift store, because we’ve either a) outgrown something, b) don’t use it anymore, c) forgot we had it and don’t see a use for it, etcetera. This keeps the clutter at bay, for the most part.
But then there is clutter caused by daily living. The laundry may not get folded for a few days. The deep freeze becomes a catch-all countertop. We develop “corners” as I like to call them. My daughter has two “corners” in our bedroom, and sometimes they stretch into “walking space” causing me to trip over them in the dark. My son has a big “corner” right in the middle of his “walking space” in his bedroom that gets cleaned up or moved when Christmas time comes around and his bike has to sit in his bedroom. I have taken over a corner of the couch as an extension of my home office and the one place where I put my work bag, purse, choir binder, sheets that need to be filed, magazines, etc.
As I look around the house, I can see that we are in need of another round of de-cluttering, quite decidedly. My own desk requires de-cluttering periodically as well. As Spellen says, when a home is free of clutter, a person can think better, experiences less stress and anxiety, and finds it easier to rest.
The fact yesterday’s session was placed right next to today’s session on living simply was clearly by design and I applaud the author for doing this. In today’s materialistic society, even people in the Church still think they need the latest and greatest, the biggest and best, and to even hint at suggesting their standard of living is too high is enough to get gasped and huffed at.
In addition to the benefits Spellen mentions in her devotional, my kids and I have found that living simply positively impacted our health and outlook on life as well. For us however, it hasn’t been a case of needing to downsize how we live, quite the opposite in fact, as we have not had the money to splurge very often or on very much. The financial demographic I have raised them in, is known as “the working poor”. We are “low-income” and have learned many things about how to make a dollar stretch farther than most people think it can go! We haven’t been able to afford pop and chips whenever we felt like it. We haven’t been able to throw chocolate bars and cookies into the grocery cart for use in lunches and break-time snacks. We haven’t had the money to pay for monthly cable television or stay current with the gaming and phone gadgets out there. But far from feeling gipped or left out, my kids have grown up not comprehending why people need all that stuff! It’s pleasantly amazing to hear them talk about how spoiled their friends are, about their dismayed amazement at the lifestyles people choose to live who then complain about how expensive everything is. I’ve run into this myself with people who try to identify with us, who have mortgage payments, go on vacations twice a year, eat out once a month and pay for cable television. I shake my head because their issues are due to having chosen a higher standard of living which really isn’t necessary to their personal survival or that of their family. If they had the same level of income, but lived in our circumstances otherwise, they’d have more money available than they knew what to do with. But their chosen standard of living sucks it out of them and they think they’re living broke.
The North American lifestyle unfortunately promotes that kind of living however. I’ve actually had family members accuse me of living third-world, precisely because we aren’t living up to the North American standard of living. But to be bluntly honest dear reader, the North American lifestyle is overrated, overpriced, and the very reason many of our people are stressed out, suffer anxiety attacks, succomb to cancer and a whole myriad of illnesses, suffer mental and emotional breakdowns, snap, and more! When Scripture talks about abundance, material abundance is rarely intimated. Rather it’s abundance of life in Christ, abundance of life among family in and out of the church, abundance of treasure in Heaven, etcetera. This isn’t to say God frowns on material abundance, but the examples of healthy material abundance given in Scripture shows us men and women God gifted to earn the funds that would be used to advance His Kingdom here on earth! So many who teach the North American prosperity gospel forget that God’s idea of abundance works anywhere in the world, while the western concept of abundance only works in the western world and in so-called highly civilized societies. Material abundance in the prosperity gospel, is used as a measure of God’s blessing and annointing on a person’s life. This is wrong on every count possible! God blesses those with material abundance who will be wise with it and generous. Scripture tells us that to whom much is given, much is required. Scripture also says that if we are faithful in few things, we will be made faithful in much. Therefore, God knows how much a person can handle, and sadly, whether due to lack of self-control or lack of teaching against the modern consumer culture, most people can’t handle their wealth very well. They squander it on debt payments, maintenance budgets, and on things that can’t be passed on either to those extending the Kingdom of God, or the next generation for whom an inheritance used to be set aside.
It honestly isn’t necessary to live the way most North Americans do, in order to be healthy, happy and productive in today’s society. However this does go against popular thinking and modern cultural perspectives. The observation is made every time a person comes home from a short-term missions trip, or even sometimes by longterm missionaries coming home on furlow, “They have so little and yet they are so happy!” No one seeks to connect the dots! Why are they so happy with so little? They don’t have the stress of maintaining expensive possessions. They don’t have the anxiety created by needless accumulation of goods and clutter. Their health is not threatened by the convenience of processed instant foods. They don’t need things to be happy. They don’t need things to be restful. They don’t need things to feel secure.
What about you? Are you willing to buck the North American lifestyle?
Only one third of the way through this 31 daily devotional for single women, and I am loving Spellen’s encouragement! My heart and my spirit rejoiced this morning when she expressed how praise and worship are not only amazing tools to bring us into the presence of God, but that by doing so, we engage in spiritual warfare, driving back the enemy of our souls!
This is so crucial in the life of the believer! Many think that the concept of praise and worship is reserved for Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, and is the part of the service where we sing! This is only partly accurate. Scripture does encourage us to enter His gates with singing and enter His courts with praise. We are encouraged to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. I’ve written about this so many times over the past 8 years that it’s starting to feel like a scratched record. God created us “in His image”, which means the things that we gravitate to on a healthy level, God will gravitate to even more so. This concept of affirmation of who He is, His character, what He’s done, why He’s done it, etcetera, draws Him to us as much as affirmation draws us to the person whole-heartedly offering it.
Conversely, just as we can tell when we are being flattered with an alterior motive, such as the husband buttering up his wife in the hopes she’ll let him buy the latest and greated lawn mower, so too God can tell when we are merely giving Him lipservice and not really meaning what we are saying. So our acts of praise and worship need to come from a whole-hearted place.
Yes, I did just say “acts of praise and worship”. Praise and worship requires more than our words. It requires more than beautiful melodies, as pleasing as those are to God. Praise and worship requires one to deliberately enter into that space. It is an act of the will to draw near to God. Sometimes it requires leaving behind a noisy situation to enter a quieter place such as the den or a forest path. Other times it requires shutting out the radio, the TV, and putting the phone on mute in order to enter into that secret place with just you and God. Praise and worship require action after God’s heart has touched yours and moved you to act on what lays heavy on God’s heart. Prayer has feet. Intimacy with God eventually causes one to be driven to please God by how they choose to live everyday life.
Praise and worship are powerful things and the enemy knows this. He and his minions will stop at nothing to distract, to make busy, and to fill your days with things that might be needful in the tempral realm in which we live, but that remove you from the eternal equation and cause you to lose your effectiveness in the Kingdom of God. When we draw near to God, as Spellen says, the enemy flees! He can’t handle being surrounded by the praises of God’s children!
Want to live a victorious Christian life? Make sure you actively choose to engage in praise and worship every single day at some point in your day, at least once, ideally several times in a day. If you are whole-hearted and not engaging in lipservice, God will show up. Just don’t make it all about you. Don’t let an alterior motive set in that puts you at the centre, praising God just to get what you think you need. Your wants and needs take a back seat during praise and worship. It’s not about you in that moment at all, it’s about God and God alone!
When was the last time you chose to truly tell God what you think of Him?
This is one concept that definitely needs to be encouraged in the personal devotional/prayer life of all modern believers. Even for myself, this was a difficult lesson to begin learning back in 2009, but it was a lesson that God knew I needed. As a worshipper used to God meeting me intimately through lyrics expressed in excellence in His presence, suddenly being thrust into silence was a shock to my spiritual system! But as T.C. Spellen has observed, this ability to meet God in the silence opens up a level of intimacy not found in the busyness of life.
Many people are scared of the silence. Silence causes a person to come face to face with who they really are, and yes, that can seem quite scary. The discovery of who you are in the silence, having to face your issues seemingly alone, causes you to do one of two things: Either A) you’ll run from the silence and seek to fill it with background music or turning on the TV, or B) you’ll unload all those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings onto God instead, and begin to let Him address them in your life.
Silence is vulnerable. Silence is wide open. Silence hides nothing and reveals everything. As T.C. Spellen says, this level of intimacy with God is necessary to the healthy development of your relationship with God in your growth as a follower of Christ.
Developing the habit of silence is strongly encouraged!
Today’s comments are short, but perhaps that’s the point. Our times with God should not be filled with just us doing all the talking. Take time in your next personal devotional time, to just sit in God’s presence, focussing on Him without filling the air with your own words. If you have to repeat His name every so often to stay focussed, do it. If feelings of gratitude begin to well up, express them, but quietly so as not to drown out anything He might say. Suddenly feel a particular Scripture verse coming on? Look it up! It may very well be that God has chosen that particular Scripture to speak to you in your moment of silence. Let Him speak. Give Him time to engage with you. Then as both my daughter and T.C. Spellen say, you will get to know the voice of God and begin to hear Him even in the busyness of life.
Peer pressure. . . We like to think it ends after High School Graduation! That pressure kids exert on each other to look cool, be cool, act cool, and speak cool, in whatever form “cool” might be at the time. . . Some say it begins in Middle School during the tween-stages. Others say it begins younger than that. One thing is certain however, if seeking approval from others matters to you, you’ll run headlong into the apparent need to “fit in”. I’ve heard teens say that if you can make it through Middle School, then you’ll be fine. They tell me that High School peer pressure lessens as youth become more secure in who they are after those apparently tumultuous tween years. I say apparently, because my own teenagers didn’t go through this. They didn’t care about seeing approval from others, and so they missed out on the trials and tribulations of trying to “fit in”. They simply “didn’t”, and were quite content with that. But I realize my kids are the exception rather than the rule.
The truth is, peer pressure doesn’t end after High School Graduation. The need to “fit in” whether at work, on the sports field, or even in church can be overwhelming! Look this way! Talk that way! How dare you even consider going to THAT place! The list goes on. The fashion industry continues to pummel men and women with the need to dress in the current fashion trends, even predicting them for you so that you are prepared when stock hits the store shelves 6 months later. Appearances are such that in a sports-minded community, NOT being seen walking around with a water-bottle somehow marks you as not being fitness-conscious or aware of your personal health. In a coffee-drenched culture, NOT being seen with a Starbucks or Tim Horton’s coffee cup in your hand, or a travel mug, is also considered passe and “out of touch”.
My latest book, “Dressed for Eternity”, spends most of its time unpacking how God adorns His Bride – The Church, in the Scriptures, and then spends a bit of time at the end discussing issues of modesty. This issue has been tackled by various authors, teachers, and preachers over the years, but research shows that such efforts as currently promoted, are leaving youth and young adults disillusioned with the church’s concept of fashion, confused about their personal worth, and reactions range from extreme cover-up to all-out rebellion against these teachings. My section on modesty aims to address the root of these reactions and offer a view of modesty that both men and women can ascribe to and live out without fear of losing their self-worth or their fashion sense.
Combine this book with my grad gift, “Mom’s Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate”, and you’ll have an encouraging message for your young adult every time they flip a page. “Mom’s Little Black Book: Godly Advice for the High School Graduate” offers practical tidbits of advice in a quote-style layout, one per page. The flip-side to every page has a Scripture verse. Topics range from personal care and grocery shopping, to household safety and finances. Daily interaction with others and spiritual care are also mentioned. Charts and calendars assist your graduate with planning out personal devotional times, daily chores, grocery lists and budgeting.
Graduation season lasts from now until the end of June in most places, but it stretches into July for other school systems around the world. Therefore, from now until July 31st, you can pick up a combined paperback set consisting of both “Mom’s Little Black Book” and “Dressed for Eternity”, for $40 if ordered through me directly. This does not include shipping and handling charges. “Dressed for Eternity” is usually $50 to $60 online, and “Mom’s Little Black Book” generally goes for $12. Get both books for $40 plus shipping and handling. Shipping can take anywhere from 4 or 5 days to 3 weeks depending on where it’s going.
So help your High School Graduate navigate adult life with all it’s pressures, by getting this grad bundle! Be sure to order with enough time for the package to get to you before the big day!
Click below to order. The first 10 orders will be entered into a draw for a digital set of this same package. So if your graduate prefers to read PDF’s or ebooks, get the paperback set for yourself and another grad on your list. Even college graduates may appreciate this set of books.
This bundled offer has now expired.
Prayer. . . a subject that has become dear to me over the years and moreso as God has shown me that the concept of prayer is so much more than merely bringing Him a laundry list. Prayer is meant to be two-way communication between the follower of Christ, and God. Scripture mentions various kinds of prayer focuses, one of which Spellen mentions in her devotional, that of intercessory prayer. She suggests that the single woman waiting for her future husband should use her time in The Waiting Room, to look around her and pray for others. She recommends making a list, thinking of family, friends, coworkers, friends, enemies, and their situations, as well as other needs the reader sees, and then praying over that list every day, including things that may not be on that list.
This business of creating a list has been a double-edged sword for me over the years. I used to keep such a list in my notes section of an old Bible program called Theophilus. Invariably, each time I kept a list, it would outgrow the time I had available to cover that list every day. The “problem” if you wish to call it that, with being a prayer warrior, is that bills still need to be paid, meaning you still have to work, and actually take time to pay those bills. Chores still need doing and require time to do them. Activities such as church involvement take time out of your day as well, and if you have a family, that much more time is carved out to be a parent with all the role entails. It is imperative to set some time aside every single day for just you and God, but it can’t be all day, or even half the day. It would be far too easy for a dedicated prayer warrior to build their list and then take several hours every day to cover it. Even my next book, which is now in the hands of reviewer/editors, could take up to an hour to go through each day if all a person does is spend no more than 5 minutes per prayer point and then add Bible reading and journalling on top of it.
Right off the top of my head, a current prayer list might look like the following:
Son’s intestinal issues, shoulder, skin sensitivities, depth of personal faith-walk, (4)
Daughter’s long-term dreams, job (2)
Personal finances, personal health issues, getting books into places where people who need them will find them, (3)
Sister’s health, spiritual protection, depth of personal faith-walk of son, husband’s income (4)
Friend’s marriage struggles, son’s temperment, safety of townspeople, sis-in-law’s faith and family safety, husband’s family issues (6)
Pastoral adherence to preaching the Truth at a local church
Recovery for lady being prayed for by mid-week prayer group
Moral decline in public sphere locally, provincially, and nationally (3)
Prayer for local, provincial, national leaders and their families (6)
Prayer for safety of Israel
Prayer for North Korea (everytime I see it in the news)
That’s 32 points of prayer right there without going into specifics too deeply. If I begin and end my prayer as Christ taught, with praise and adoration of who God is and what He has done, which means taking time to be thankful for various situations, provisions, etc that God has provided as well, (that is another list all by itself that is healthy to create) and if I only give one minute to every item on this list, I could very easily spend an hour or more in prayer.
Depending on your schedule and efforts to adjust it for healthy spiritual habits, you may or may not have a minimum of one hour to spend in prayer, let alone adding Scripture-reading and journalling to the mix. This is where another aspect of being an intercessor comes in.
Scripture says to “Pray without ceasing”. Some interpret this to mean never getting up off your knees and hitting your prayer mat every chance you get. Instead, when you look at the Greek behind this verse, you see that it’s talking about a running conversation with God as you go about your daily life. God does long to be included in your daily activities, and keeping an ear out to Him and conversing with Him as you go through your day’s events, does very much include Him. You might even be surprised at how God then chooses to interact with your day! Talk to God about the traffic. Talk to God about your family situation as you deal with it. Talk to God about your shopping trip. Talk to God about paying your bills. Talk to God about what you’re seeing on the news.
In this manner you can get far more than one hour’s prayer into your day. However don’t rule out some private time for just you and God as well. It may be in your personal private time that God lays a particular burden for some situation in someone’s life on your heart. Obey that prompting and spend some time allowing the Holy Spirit to pray through you over that situation.
God very much loves it when we engage Him in conversation! Just as Spellen says, the more often we draw near to God, the more He will share with us the things on His heart. So whether you have the time to spend in concerted effort in prayer to go over an ever-changing prayer list, or whether you converse with God throughout your day instead, make sure you are in communication with the Lover of your soul! Don’t shut Him out!
Journalling, what used to be known as “Dear Diary” decades ago when pen still touched paper, has always been something I’ve struggled with. I start, sometimes go for up to a month or more at a time, then life happens and it’s hard to get back at it. Journalling is supposed to be a private expression of the struggles, thoughts, and processing that goes on in one’s heart and mind. But the most effective way for me to process, has been in a manner where at least one other person sees it. I’ve learned however, that it’s not just any person that I can “journal” to. The person has to be deeply trusted. If I sense alterior motives on the part of the person I am journalling to, I am not as willing to journal to them. If I get the feeling they don’t care to the level I need at the time, my journalling will cease too. The idea of journalling to God is something I have tried a few times to start, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t stuck.
The logic there is missing a few details, because God does read my emails to people and many times responds faster than they do! I know God reads email without a shadow of a doubt! I know He reads what I write when I’m journalling to someone, because half the time, the first journalled email will end up with a second or third by the time some major issue being mentioned is addressed, and it wasn’t the recipient doing the responding, it was God the entire time! I’ve seen this happen too often to mistake it for anything else.
Blogging and Facebook notes have made it a bit easier to process my thoughts in a more public setting. However that too has it’s limitations. There are things I would not be able to blog or write a note about in public, because someone in the list might read it and it could be involving them. But on the whole, this form of communication has made it easier for me to process among a wider group of people.
Many people keep prayer journals of their conversations with God. I agree that this is great for helping people look back and see just how many prayers God has chosen to answer and how He answered them. While I was going through my self-guided trip through the Psalms back in 2009 and 2010, I would journal every day’s thoughts on each chapter I read. Sometimes this meant taking two days for a given chapter, or in the case of Psalm 119, a day per alphabet stanza. Many of those notes made it into my first book project in some form or other as God continues to take me down the journey of learning to live everyday life as the Bride of Christ.
I am currently reviewing a 31 daily devotional by T.C.Spellen, a review I’d promised a full year ago now! She offers helpful habits to the woman waiting in the wings for God’s special man to come along before marriage. One of those habits she mentions, is this concept of journalling. For her, it is an act of obedience to process what God is talking to her about, and to process what is going on in her life at the time she puts pen to page.
Scripture does tell us to meditate on His Word daily. The Scriptural concept of meditation is not to clear one’s mind as in the case of Yoga or other eastern forms of meditation, but to fill one’s mind with thoughts about a given passage of Scripture, mulling it over, thinking about it from different angles, finding out how it applies to one’s life situation in some fashion and then seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance in applying that Scripture to everyday living. In this manner, obeying God’s directive to meditate on His Word is accomplished by many in the form of journalling.
For myself, when journalling via Scriptural meditation, I have to have my electronic Bible open on my screen, because some thought will jump into my head related to the passage I am reading, and I have to jump right back into the Bible in order to look up what else God says on that thought, and typically end up quoting those verses in my writing for that moment.
Discovering what God says about a given passage via other passages of Scripture will do two things: A) It will allow you to view the thought in context of the rest of Scripture, and B) it will show you if that thought has been taken out of context, or if it genuinely is what you began thinking it was. Sometimes we get twisted ideas of what given passages mean, and we will even hear those twisted versions taught by big-name preachers and teachers. But when we ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in understanding God’s Word, we will be able to discern when we’ve mistaken a verse to mean one thing when in reality it means another. Remember that God’s Word is profitable for reproof, for correction, for encouragement, and for training in righteousness. Sometimes our preconcieved notion of a given passage needs to be challenged for us to get a better and deeper understanding.
Engaging in journalling of this nature can drastically lengthen one’s private time every day. For example, today’s thought began with reading today’s devotional pages almost half an hour ago, and here I am 26 minutes later, still typing!
I apologize to T.C. Spellen at not getting to her book, “The Waiting Room: A 31-day Daily Devotional for Single Women Waiting for the Right Husband” till now, but I am reading it now.
Tonight my grown kids and I celebrated our own little version of Messianic Passover. This year was a bit different, in that we did it nacho-style, and my son is now old enough to take more of the lead in this special celebration. Due to the fact I’d put our little “order of service” together way back when the kids were young, and using a book about the Messianic Passover that I didn’t own, I have been unable to update the order to reflect the growing ages of my kids. But it was only this year that they didn’t want to go running for the hidden leaven, or go searching for the wrapped broken piece of mazzo bread. But there was something akin to pride and accomplishment when my son agreed to stand and pray twice during the proceedings, break the bread before we ate, and watch both kids each give their own verbal contribution as we’d clink each toast during the ceremony.
I asked them a new question this year as we identified the various items represented on the table this year. The last question I normally ask is that of the special dishes. The usual answer is that it is a reminder of the wealth the Egyptians showered on Israel as they fled the night of that first Passover. But this year, I wanted to bring out another thought. Both kids looked at me a bit blank as they admitted I had not asked this next question before. “What do the special dishes mean on this side of Passover?” After a moment of puzzled silence, I answered by saying that once we have been washed by the Blood of the Lamb, we are then made into vessels fit for service in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus Christ was born during lambing season, in the same region of Judah where the Temple flocks were kept. This means He was born during the early Spring. In the typical Hebrew household, a family was to take a lamb and have it live with them for an entire month before it was to be slaughtered and prepared for the Passover meal. It would be during the slaughter that the lamb’s blood would be gathered, and then, using hyssop, applied to the door posts and lintel of the home. 33 years later, and one month after the Temple flocks had lambed, Christ would be beaten, whipped, and hung on the cruelest form of punishment the world knew at that time, a Roman Cross! Even John the Baptist announced to his followers, “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world!”.
The Jewish day is from sundown to sundown. God would put it in the Scriptures as “and the evening and the morning were a given day”. The Jews also strictly observed the concept of Sabbath in those days, much as orthodox Jews do now. Christ’s body had to come down off that cross before Shabbat was eaten, the celebration that we typically associate with Friday evenings today, but that was and in many households still is, the beginning of Sabbath. So it was with great haste that Joseph of Arimathea got permission and removed Christ from the Cross and placed him in his own tomb.
Three days later, Mary and Martha, and another Mary would discover the great news we praise God for to this day, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead! In order to be in the tomb three days, and yet have Mary and Martha arrive on the first day of the week, meant that Christ’s death was actually on a Thursday according to modern time keeping. Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night He was in that tomb, but Sunday morning. . . yes, Sunday morning. . . that great and glorious Sunday morning, Christ ROSE!!! He conquored death and the grave! The Lamb that was Slain lives forevermore and will one day return first for His Church, and later to set foot on the Mount of Olives to do battle one last time with that slimy serpant known as satan himself, of whom the capitalizing his name grants too much respect and honour.
The Lamb is Risen! He has chosen to bear the scars of those nails as a reminder to us of the love that drove Him there. The little lamb stuffy that graces our Passover table holds a tiny red heart that says, “I love you”. we place this lamb on our table every year as a reminder of why Christ went to the Cross. Jesus Christ could not bear to have our sin eternally separate us from Himself! He willingly took our faults, our failings, our anger, our selfishness, and every thought word and deed that fell short of God’s holiness, and took it on Himself to pay the death penalty in our place!
If you don’t know this Jesus, I’d encourage you to read the Gospel of John this weekend. Then talk to God, seeking forgiveness for your own sinful shortcomings, and ask to be washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb. Then seek out a Bible-believing, Salvation teaching, Holy Spirit-leading church to learn more about the Lover of your soul and how you may show Him your love and gratitude in your everyday life.
Good Friday dawns shortly, followed by Resurrection Sunday! Don’t miss it!
