Your Bigger Purpose

Today we all went to a great new park in our city. Among many things there was a ravine with a stream on tht bottom, quite deep- cameras don’t capture that depth when said camera is in my hands- and elephant ears growing in them quite tall. These elephant ears grow in this ravine beautifully. They look great, they have everything they need and are rather the star of the show. However, they serve a greater purpose. They were planted just to be pretty and get the glory. They keep flooding down, they shade plants that grow below, and they keep erosion down. Very useful!

When Zac was little, we watched Thomas the Tank Engine quite a bit and the show talked about the glory of being a “very useful engine”.

I say all this to remind everyone that like the elephant plant and Thomas, we were made for a greater purpose. It is cringworthy when people live only for themselves and pleasure and glory but never give credence and honor and service to the God who made us all, in fact made everything we know of. How myopic and dastardly to ignore the higher purpose we were made for! May it never be! We have to seek out and fulfill our higher purpose for God’s glory because He wishes it. He is always more generous than we are, He rewards any sacrifice we make for Him or others He loves.😃❤️

It Takes Purposeful Effort

Being a Christian requires purposeful effort. So does being a jerk in many cases. So does running a marathon. So does accomplishing anything praiseworthy. But to hear Father God say “Well done, good and faithful child”, we have to decide to commit purposeful effort into pleasing Him. That includes learning what pleases Him via the Bible, prayer all the time, and meeting together with other Christians for help and encouragement with both of those. It is easy to be lazy, requires very little effort and no purpose. But actually committing is a big deal and a lot of purposeful effort will need to be utilized to get into good habits and stay in close, maturing relationship with our loving God. And eternally- speaking and even right now, that is where we need and want to be.❤

Lack of Problems is Not the Goal

So, ya don’t want any problems? Join the club. The goal in life is not to get through it without anything happening. Not only is that literally impossible but horribly boring and leads to spoiled, self- centered boring immature brats sitting about, wanting to be waited on.

We are alive to serve and worship God.

Trouble comes because God loves us enough to grow and mature us and show us His love for us by caring us through everything. We grow, we mayure, we develop into people who serve and worship God through trouble. Unfortunately there is sin in this world and we are stubborn with pride so learning has to happen through trouble.

The best thing we can do is not avoid trouble but be contrite and learn the lesson quickly and get quickly to serving and worshipping God. ❤

My Spiritual Gift of Faith

Faith has always been my spiritual gift. Many proofs I won’t get in to, but I make it a habit to be truthful always so I guess your faith in practice will allow you to believe me. Lol. My mom’s family (parents, grandparents, aunts, cousins, etc.) were missionaries. Missionaries often have a lot of faith because God proves Himself faithful to them. Often their faith is actually very small as they start their journey and by the end, their faith has been developed to enormous levels by God throughout it. That is how it is quite often. My grandmother, my strongest influence (a missionary nurse to Africa with my grandpa as missionary dentist and preacher) was my strongest faith influence. She co-authored my book Worry Crashers. She was ) prayer warrior, but her enormous faith developed over time but her obedience pushed her through to develop it. She told me this in correspondences. I was born with it. Like I said, it was my spiritual gift. We all have one. I just happened to learn mine young with family’s help, love and wisdom to draw from. What I really suck at in general is planning. I can see the big picture and know full well God will provide as we obey and He will help us meet goals He agrees with or will change my direction. No worries. But getting from here to there, I leap. I charge ahead. I trust and go. The details are not n important and generally work themselves out but sometimes God blesses me with precious friends who help me organize, plan and focus. My least favorite things to do. It is not n impatience either, as I though it was for a long time, it is vision to see the next goal from here. Even before this step is complete, my eyes see the next finished project and how it helps and figures in. I can visualize everything. I see it complete before some tiny faith person tells me it can’t be done. I laugh. I know it can. God let me see it. And even if humanly impossible, God can do absolutely anything. There is no doubt in my mind absolutely all. I do not trust people but I trust God with all my heart and soul. That is my spiritual gift and I wanted to share it for some reason. Maybe it will help you. Maybe it will cause you to seek out your God-given spiritual gift and have the courage to use it. Nothing is more satisfying. It’s how we are cut, our purpose, our meaning. Those who don’t look for God and do what God designed them to do are forever searching for some pathetic (but seems perfect at the time) substitute. Be bigger and wiser that that.❤