Your Spiritual Life... taking your temperature

This morning I got back to reading a book I started months ago.  It's a great read, humorous and poignant, focusing on becoming who God created us to be.  The author's point in the first chapter is to say that God purposefully created each of us to do good work that He has prepared in advance (Ephesians 2:10).  What an awesome idea.  We are not our handiwork, our life is not our project.  God has created us with a purpose in mind and our goal is to allow the Spirit of God to direct us.  Can you imagine becoming what God, Adonia, Elohim, the Creator of the Universe has planned for you to be?  Sometimes I get so wrapped up in trying to figure it out, trying to decide who I am and what I need to be doing and how to achieve MY goals that I forget that it's not about MY desires and plans, it's about God's.  Would you rather be the pinnacle of what YOU can achieve, or the perfect realization of what God has designed you to be?  It's silly, but I focus more of my time of the former rather than the latter; no wonder that leads to frustration.  When we become who God designed us to be, when we learn to live in the flow of His Spirit, we can then be used in God's work to redeem the world.  The author finishes by saying that "The me God wants me to be" is measured by my capacity to love (John 13:35)  (Uh-oh...).  To know if I'm living in the flow, the author suggests that I ask myself two things to indicate how my spiritual life is going:
i.   Am I growing more easily discouraged these days?
ii.  Am I growing more easily irritated these days?


Those are powerful and convicting questions... so, "how is your spiritual life going?"


Be encouraged, God has a plan for you and the more you learn to live in the flow of His Spirit, the closer you will be to being the you God created you to be...
Blessings!

Classes this Fall.... Wednesday nights!

Hey everyone.  We're looking at classes for the fall and I'm thinking about doing a combined marriage/parenting class.  Each series lasts six weeks, so we can do them back to back.  I have a couple of suggestions and I'm attaching them here.  Let me know if this is something you are interested in, or if you have another request.  I prefer classes like this that are "real-life" based, not someone's idea of what a perfect Christian family should be.  These look pretty good, and I think they apply to a broad range of families and "families-to-be," but give me some feedback.  You can comment below.

Marriage- Built to Last


Parenting- The Early Years