How would we feel if the President of the United States needed our help or expertise with something? What if he called on the phone and said, "We really need your help and we'll provide you with everything you need. Consider your resources endless."
No matter our political party, we would be amazed, along with our family and friends. Beyond excited.
The most powerful person in the world needs my help!
We might even consider it the most significant experience of our lives.
Well...guess what? It's already happened to every Christian!
Someone even more famous has asked you to work for Him.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
And friends, we should be ecstatic! We get to work for Jesus. Hallelujah! We get to love in His name. We get to.
When He says FOLLOW ME, he means serve with me. Come alongside and learn of me. Do what I do. Feel what I feel. Love like I love. Weep for what I weep for.
Mark 9:35
Giving Thanks Today
Thank you, Father, for these blessings and graces:
We told the kids water play wouldn't be a regular thing here this summer, and we wouldn't be replacing the kiddy pool. For days they've been grumbling. And then the neighbors, the ones with only a part-time job, no vehicle, and on food stamps and section 8 rent help, couldn't pay their electric bill and their electricity got turned off. (I called my church to seek help from the benevolence fund for them, for the sake of their four kids, and also to possibly get financial counseling from one of our deacons for them).
It was hard explaining to my children that if we mismanaged our money, something would get turned off or the mortgage wouldn't get paid. This wasn't the first time a utility was turned off for these neighbors, who have yet to drop their cable TV, their fancy phones, their dogs or their cigarettes. This time their kids were pretty stressed...it's one thing after another over there.
For a few years I was without a vehicle during the day, but never without one entirely. Maybe they consider the TV part of their sanity? Since I haven't walked in their shoes I'm trying not to judge, but it's hard. They come here about 4 times a week for sugar, milk, or something. Their food help doesn't last long enough because they don't know how to budget grocery money and they don't cook from scratch. Lots of needs and our heart is to help, slowly, as they learn to trust us. Our own humility and lack of judgement is crucial in our being able to help, so please pray for the whole situation? I'm concerned the kids aren't getting enough milk, for one. Thank you.)
As much as my kids are still grumbling about the kiddy pool and water play, they understand better, being exposed to the neighbor's difficulties, that management of money is key to keeping stress at a minimum.
Don't feel sorry for my kids. I don't, because now, the few times a month I will say yes, they will appreciate the sprinkler play more, and doing without will help them better understand our Compassion children's circumstances. If we can't put ourselves in another's shoes, we can't manage adequate mercy, and without denying ourselves it's hard to see any of this at all.
Low-income or modest-income American kids can grow up wanting everything they didn't have as children, and they might spoil their own children to keep them from feeling "poor". I don't want that for my kids. If they do better than us financially I want them to give it away, not clutch it or use it like the culture does. It's a tall order for us to hope for as parents, but with God all things are possible.
The more we have the more we feel entitled to, and entitlement is a mindset straight from Satan himself. In the Lord we have enough. When Jesus conquered this world He made us rich!
No matter our political party, we would be amazed, along with our family and friends. Beyond excited.
The most powerful person in the world needs my help!
We might even consider it the most significant experience of our lives.
Well...guess what? It's already happened to every Christian!
Someone even more famous has asked you to work for Him.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
And friends, we should be ecstatic! We get to work for Jesus. Hallelujah! We get to love in His name. We get to.
When He says FOLLOW ME, he means serve with me. Come alongside and learn of me. Do what I do. Feel what I feel. Love like I love. Weep for what I weep for.
Mark 9:35
Giving Thanks Today
Thank you, Father, for these blessings and graces:
We told the kids water play wouldn't be a regular thing here this summer, and we wouldn't be replacing the kiddy pool. For days they've been grumbling. And then the neighbors, the ones with only a part-time job, no vehicle, and on food stamps and section 8 rent help, couldn't pay their electric bill and their electricity got turned off. (I called my church to seek help from the benevolence fund for them, for the sake of their four kids, and also to possibly get financial counseling from one of our deacons for them).
It was hard explaining to my children that if we mismanaged our money, something would get turned off or the mortgage wouldn't get paid. This wasn't the first time a utility was turned off for these neighbors, who have yet to drop their cable TV, their fancy phones, their dogs or their cigarettes. This time their kids were pretty stressed...it's one thing after another over there.
For a few years I was without a vehicle during the day, but never without one entirely. Maybe they consider the TV part of their sanity? Since I haven't walked in their shoes I'm trying not to judge, but it's hard. They come here about 4 times a week for sugar, milk, or something. Their food help doesn't last long enough because they don't know how to budget grocery money and they don't cook from scratch. Lots of needs and our heart is to help, slowly, as they learn to trust us. Our own humility and lack of judgement is crucial in our being able to help, so please pray for the whole situation? I'm concerned the kids aren't getting enough milk, for one. Thank you.)
As much as my kids are still grumbling about the kiddy pool and water play, they understand better, being exposed to the neighbor's difficulties, that management of money is key to keeping stress at a minimum.
Don't feel sorry for my kids. I don't, because now, the few times a month I will say yes, they will appreciate the sprinkler play more, and doing without will help them better understand our Compassion children's circumstances. If we can't put ourselves in another's shoes, we can't manage adequate mercy, and without denying ourselves it's hard to see any of this at all.
Low-income or modest-income American kids can grow up wanting everything they didn't have as children, and they might spoil their own children to keep them from feeling "poor". I don't want that for my kids. If they do better than us financially I want them to give it away, not clutch it or use it like the culture does. It's a tall order for us to hope for as parents, but with God all things are possible.
The more we have the more we feel entitled to, and entitlement is a mindset straight from Satan himself. In the Lord we have enough. When Jesus conquered this world He made us rich!
4 comments:
I really enjoyed this post!
The line about entitlement being straight from the devil....I've been struggling with this is a few different ways. My son has a very entitled attitude. We are working on it and he is learning, but I made a lot of poor choices that helped foster this in him. Then, just this weekend, I realized that I am struggling with this too. Not with possessions though, with my time. It was an eye-opening realization and I'm praying that I will be more obedient with my time.
Blessings! And such a cute picture with the goat! :)
You are doing the right thing, dear friend! The best thing we can do is pray for our hearts to obey and grow.
It is true that the more we have the more we feel we deserve. You are as always inspiring! We got a whopping water bill in the hundreds last month, as we are trying to maintain some grass in the back yard here in sunny CA. Most summers we let the yard got to dirt but I realized this makes my house clean up so much more difficult because the kids get so dirty;( Love the sweet farm animal pictures:)
Tesha, Hope you enjoyed your Bible conference! Once we had a bill over $200 because Mary left the hose running in the winter and we didn't know it. Maybe that is what happened? One of the kids left it on? We were in the high desert in CA and watering with a sprinkler system never made the water bill too high.
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