October 24, 2007

  • Prayer and Muffins

    Our prayer time yesterday was good. It was just a little over a half hour at the start of a busy day, but it was good. My friend brought a prayer book with her that her husband had given her for Christmas a few years ago. It had lots of different prayer topics in it, and the one we chose for yesterday fit absolutely perfectly with holding to the fruits of the Spirit and purging the sins that keep us from it. We have agreed to keep a weekly meeting time for prayer and accountability. I felt a little weird taking a prayer break at work (I start my day much earlier), but it worked out ok.

    The past few days my devotional time has been on being patient and waiting for God. The whole book is on "Stress-Free Living" (I actually bought this from my sister's church when I was on vacation this summer). This particular chapter is on patience. Three things it says you have to do is to:

    1. Wait with expectation
    2. Wait with motivation
    3. Wait with donation (in other words, do something to get you toward that goal)

    I need to work on all three. Patience is another virtue I do not possess much of. I guess that makes it sound like I don't possess many fruits of the Spirit, but I do, there are just a few that the sinful me seems to push out all the time.

    The pastor on Sunday said when you get rid of a bad habit, you have to replace it with a good one or that bad habit will sneak back. If you purge yourself of foul language, you must consciously replace it with kind language. Eventually kind language will become the habit and you won't even have to think about it.

    Now, here's a question for you, and I'd really like your honest opinion. If you replace a bad word in your vocabulary with a neutral word (like saying fudge or shoot instead of cuss words), is that still foul language because the intention is the same?

    Now, I'm off to bake muffins for a staff meeting this morning.

Comments (2)

  • I have been convicted that "mild oaths" such as "darn" or "dang" are just as bad.  One would substitute the major oath if one could get by with it.  I am trying to weed them out of my vocabulary.  I have also brought this up in my SS class.  I figure if I can stop 10-12 year olds now, it will be easier on them in the future.  Love you.  Gotta get to work.

  • This is a worthwhile question. I try to avoid the mild oaths too, since "gosh," "geeze," "golly," etc., are obviously replacing God's name. I do say "shoot," though. Maybe I'm being inconsistent. I say things like "aw, nuts" (however silly that is)--maybe I shouldn't do that either. I had a Christian school teacher who used as his exclamation "what a blessing." Often times that was not said with enthusiasm, but he used it to remind himself that all situations are from God. It was little bit funny, but I thought it was actually a pretty good idea.

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