I will try to post again, sooner than the last one.

 You can see one of his first posts is a night photo of palm trees in Jamaica.

 Please try to stagger your use of his sight so both of you who read my blog are not on his sight at the same time.  We would not want to crash his sight.

 KTISIS is the Greek word for “creation” – God’s art.

When we submit, we relinquish the burden of always being right.  Richard Foster expands on this concept to demonstrate how as humans we are so often trapped by the need to be right.  Whether it is personal relationships, church relationships, professional relationships.  If we are striving to be right about everything, we are always struggling against something or someone.   Giving up that need to be right, frees us to serve.

Often it seems that we struggle to be right in order to protect our image or reputation.  But God calls us to submission, and He promises to provide for all our needs.  Can we trust Him to provide the protection we need in this area also, and stop striving to do this by our own hand?

“But most often, the trials we face are of the garden variety rather than heroic. Your superior at the office makes a mistake that places you in an awkward position. Your son puts a nice round hole in the neighbor’s window with his new BB gun. You are embroiled in ongoing tension with someone who used to be your best friend. 

But through the operations of grace, even these work endurance in us, and we learn something of the cosmic patience of God. We come to see God’s timing and God’s ways as altogether good. We become what George Fox called “established” men and women.”

        – Richard Foster

Is the spiritual life a series of successes and failures in which we hope to outweight failures with successes?  Or is it a journey that keeps Christ as the direction we are traveling.

“Think in terms of the direction of your life rather than your most recent failure or success.  We certainly want you to think of faithfulness to God in terms of Jesus’ emphasis on relationships rather than rules.  We want you to sense that your own faith needs to be dynamic, growing, and maturing every day rather than worried because you don’t have everything fixed, nailed down, and perfected.  We’re trying to get those things fixed in our minds too.”

       -Rubel Shelley and John York  The Jesus Proposal

The girls and I went fishing Saturday afternoon and we had a great time.  We were getting ready to leave and I snapped this photo as the sun was setting over Bringle Lake.  It was a beautiful time of the evening and a great time with the girls.

 As I sat on the bank of a lake this afternoon I watched the leaves fall on the water.  I noticed all at once as if in concert every leaf starting moving out toward the middle of the lake.    I could not even feel the breeze but I knew it was there.  I could see its effect.

 This reminded me of the working of the Holy Spirit.  There are times when He is working in my life.  I may not even feel it, or realize it at the time.  But I am trying to learn to tune in to the signals that will show me that God is present and active in my life.

We talked about praying “if it be thy will”.  I confess to having used that in the past as an out for my lack of faith in the power of prayer.  I liken this to a teenager saying “Whatever”.   So there is the “whatever” extreme that refuses to make any strong committment to what we are praying for.

 Then there is the other extreme I called “Vending Machine Prayer” which says that I can order God to serve up anything if I simply put in the right coins, and push the right buttons.

These are two extremes that help me think about prayer.  In the end our discussion group concluded that prayer and meditation are intertwined.  Prayer is communicating with God, but effective prayer comes when we begin to listen as much or more than we talk. 

 We are seeking to align our lives with His will so that as we are transformed to be ever more like Christ we are becoming His will on earth.

What would it mean if Paul were writing this to us, not to the Ephesians?

     What would the love for all his people feel like?

     What wisdom and revelation do you need in order to know him better?

     What does it mean to you to know His incomparably great power for us who believe?

     How do we become the body of Christ at work around us?

 There are many answers to those questions.  As I studied these verses to put together a mission statement for a ministry I am involved with, I really connected with this passage.  What would this mean to me if Paul was writing to me.   Where do these points resonate in my life and experience?  I am not going to answer them here from my experiences, because each person will have different answers to the questions.  But I enjoyed thinking through the answers.