Holy___!

I often find my self thinking like Paul, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:19) Little things separate me from God’s heart when I want to draw near, and that grieves my spirit. My prayer life has recently been more of me asking for the Holy Spirit’s direction and guidance because there are still some rooms in my soul that need God’s remodeling work.

As we have learned over the past few weeks at The Vine, the Holy Spirit is God presently available to each of us. As I have been contemplating God making Himself available to me, I have had to take a serious look at what motivates me. Buried in this inward journey God again hit me with the obvious; the Holy Spirit is just as His name declares…HOLY, and cannot dwell in unholy places. That’s not to say that we, who sin, cannot have the Holy Spirit, but we can’t actively sin and expect the power of God to be at work in us.

The conclusion I have come to is that our motives tell the story, and what God has revealed to me is that I am motivated by happiness more than holiness. In The Pursuit of Man, A.W. Tozer writes, "The true ideal is not to be happy but to be holy. The Holy heart alone can be the habitation of the Holy Ghost." So my challenge is to die to the idea of happiness and grow in the pursuit of holiness, only then can The Holy Spirit become a full time resident and be more than occasional guest, bringing with Him Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faith, Gentleness, and Self Control. That is when we will truly experience the abundant life Jesus promised.

Halloween 2008

We were lucky to go back to L'town and continue our tradition of trick-or-treating with the Ryan family. They are some of the nicest people and we miss having them as our neighbors!! Calen and their son, Chase, are big buds. Ellie Grace likes to hang out with him too. Emmy Kate loves to tackle and kiss (to the point of gnawing) their youngest son, Cade. Taking pictures with these guys was not an easy task and sadly, we didn't get any of Cade. He was the cutest - he was Eeyore with a removable tail!! Calen was a pirate, Ellie Grace was a flower/fairy, and Chase was Buzz Lightyear with blow-up wings. The peacock costume had to return this year and Emmy Kate loved it!!

Thoughts on a Wednesday morning

"Be still and know that I am God;
I will be exhalted among the nations,
I will be exhalted on the earth."
Psalm 46:10

The girls' birthday

We had a party for Ellie Grace and Emmy Kate. Their birthdays are 2 weeks apart and I just didn't think I could do 2 birthday parties in 2 weeks, so we did them together. It was a little chaotic, especially since the girls' could have cared less about the presents. So..I ended up opening 2 sets of presents. But, I think a good time was had by all.

Political Mess - by Candace

I felt the need to put by Candace because Patrick has been blogging so much lately.
I just felt the need to vent a little about my frustrations about all of the political drama. My family has always been big into politics so I find it hard to turn off that switch in me. I get so riled up between the campaigns and I check the news every minute for updates. My big plan on Friday night was watching the debate with Patrick. I was pumped about it. But a person whose blog I stalk really has hit me hard. I would link it, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Anyway, she made the point that God doesn't care about this election. The reason why He doesn't care, is because He already knows who wins. He has already known who would win this election from the beginning of time. But, what He does care about is our hearts. He does care about where we will spend eternity. I know where I will spend eternity, but I am not so sure about some of my friends. And, how I handle this election and what happens and my opinions, could affect the way my friends feel about Christians and Christ. I have to keep my eye on the big picture, the main goal. My goal cannot be - have my team win this election. My goal has to be point to and glorify God in all that I do. So before I get up on my high horse and say "I am right and you are soooo wrong", I have to think about does this glorify God? It is so hard. Especially since, I think my team is going to lose.

confession time

Confession: I love my wife. She is beautiful, not just outside, but inside too! (I know that's a cheesy cliche, but its true) She cares about and thinks about things that don't even cross my mind. I guess it's true that opposites attract, because in all the ways that it really counts she really does help bring focus to things that I would not even notice.

a heart epiphany

Colossians 1:22 says, …”He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” This was the key verse we talked about at Cluster group the other night…and I had a heart epiphany today as I listened to "The Way I Am" on my playlist.com stuff. (I call it a heart epiphany because it was one of those moments that connected something I have known in my head for a long time and something my heart had not felt in a long time.) God loves me right where I am; just like I am, and doesn’t want me to try to be perfect. He wants me to embrace the freedom he has given me and experience life free from accusation. The hard part for me is the simple part of the Gospel…Accept what God unconditionally offers.

Here’s the epiphany. Paul uses the word reconcilED…past tense!!!

The hard part for me, on my journey with Christ, is really understanding that the reconciliation is not a continual process. I have been reconciled. Once I chose to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior the reconciliation was sealed. I don’t have to live up to a standard. I just need to heed the words Paul writes to the Church at Colosse(1:23): “continue in your faith established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel…”

That’s the launching point for everyone’s faith journey. We have to accept that God has already done all the work for reconciliation. It has already been accomplished. All we have to do is accept it, and if we continue in our faith established and firm, we will see a change in how we react to the world around us. We won’t be perfect. We will mess up, but the good news is that we don’t have to continually be reconciled. We are reconciled, and always will be. That is where true freedom lives.

So today I choose to be free!!!