You should really try this!

So daily life is full and prayer is taking on a much greater importance and dedicated time slot in my life. (Thank God!!)

There's also the dairy-goat life and staying in touch with good friends. This week a neighbor asked me if I'd like to join her weekly for prayer and Bible study. We got together Monday morning and prayed together for an hour. It was the most wonderful morning I've had in... years.

I've been studying first Peter on an inconsistent basis.  The 12 hour shift days I work pretty much knock out everything except, eat, shower and sleep.  But when I have been engaged in the study I'm amazed.

One of the things this study by Jen Wilkin is having me do is re-write the one or two verses in focus for the week in my own words.  Have you ever done this?  You should.  I'm sure there are studies that show that comprehension is increased when we regurgitate something we've read in own words.

(As a side note, I have a screaming goat outside.  It's very distracting.  Keeping a buck goat during the rutting season is truly a challenge.  I don't suggest you try it.  Okay, back to what I was saying.)

1 Peter 1:1-25 in my own words:

From Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  To the people God chose as his own who have been kicked out of their homeland and are living in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bythneia, just as God the Father intended ahead of time would be the case to set you apart by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. 

God is so wonderful!  Because he is so extremely merciful he has caused us to be born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  And our new birth through Christ is a real, live guarantee that one day we will receive all that God has for us in Christ- an inheritance that can never loose value, breakdown or die. It's kept in heaven for us by God who's power through faith is keeping us saved until the day we get to fully see all that that salvation is! 

In this amazing salvation God has worked for you through faith in the risen Christ, you rejoice.  Even though for now you are suffering and are saddened by all kinds of trials.  It will only be a little while though.  These trials are testing and proving the genuineness of your faith which is worth much more than gold that perishes.  And the genuineness of your faith is going to result in glory and honor and praise when you see Jesus fact to face... when he is revealed to the whole world.  Though you have never seen him you love him and believe in him, and this is evidence of your true faith which saves you! 

The Old Testament prophets prophecied about our salvation.  They longed to know what time and who they were prophesying about, searching and asking for answers.  Christ's Spirit was in them prophesying about the time when he would come, but they only knew that this was for a people to come, not for themselves.  They were prophesying the good news that we get to know and understand.  Angels don't even know what we know!  They would love to understand what we understand! 

Since then you have been so mercifully saved, prepare your minds for action!  Be sober-minded!  Let your only hope be all the grace and good that will be yours the day you see Jesus face to face.  As children of God, be obedient, not letting yourself be molded by the passions that intoxicated you before you knew Christ!  But just like God is holy- be holy in the way you live. 

If you call God Father, who is the judge of all and who doesn't play favorites in his judging, live your life in reverent awe, knowing that you were bought out of a life of meaningless living; not with money, or material treasures, but with blood- the blood of the Son of God, who is the only perfect sacrifice for your sin. 

Christ has always been known in heaven.  He is eternal but in these last days he has been made known to us who believe in him through God who raised him from the dead.  So our belief in Christ is really belief in God. 

So, since you have been totally re-born by God's living and indwelling word and have purified your soul by believing and submitting to that word (which is the good news about Christ) so that you can genuinely love these other people in God's family who have become your eternal brothers and sisters- love one another earnestly from a pure heart!  For it is written: All flesh is like grass and all the glory of flesh is like a flower- it all dies and fades away.  But the word of God never dies and never fades away!  It remains healthy and perfect and vibrant and living forever!  And this is why you will live forever!  This is what you have been born again by!

You should really try this!  Take in a few verses of God's word.  Read and re-read it over and over again.  Then pray it.  The re-write it in your own words as though you were trying to speak it to someone who'd never heard it before.

Quieted,

Sheila

Anticipation

(Pics from last year's Oregon trip)

We spent almost the entire day at the new house but never managed to see much of each other. The boys were out on the back half of the acre most of the day either digging for treasure, shooting at ant hills with the BB gun, or chasing each other with water guns. James worked on pulling out the old sump pump from the basement and getting a new water softener and water heater from someone on Craigslist while I did the only thing I'm comfortable with in buying a fixer-upper... clean, and played gopher for James when he was at Lowe's and needed me to measure the pipe sticking up out of the sewage ejector pump and get the model number off the corroded thing. I plugged my nose and did my best. Ugh. I can't imagine working in the sewage business. Yuck!

 Bailey, our black lab, wore herself out chasing a squirrel and sniffing for cottontail bunnies.

 By the time we got home all my normal Saturday energies were spent, but I haven't even begun to do the normal stuff that needs to get done on a Saturday around the house we're still living in. I have a lot to do this week if I'm going to head to Oregon on the 8th.  Monday, after work, I take my physical and do all the HR stuff with Phoenix Baptist hospital. I start orientation on June 24th. Tuesday evening we have the end-of-season baseball party at a laser tag place. Wednesday is my last day at my school nurse job and I get to pick up a friend at the airport. Thursday and Friday will be preparing to leave Saturday for the long drive to Redding, CA to stay with my sister.

I look forward to these trips to Nor Cal and Oregon every year!  But I think my boys enjoy it even more.  They're yearly calendar seems to revolve around this trip.  They mention it throughout the school year with longing.  And as we get to summer, daily they ask, "When are we leaving for our trip to Oregon?"  They love the early morning wake-up the day we start out on our road-trip.  They anticipate it.  They know good times are comin'!

It's like that as a Christian.  Our calendar is built around the celebration of Christ.  And life is a pilgrimage and we move through our full days, change of addresses and daily tasks longing for those times when we get to come together and revel in the promises, and tell the Old, Old Story, and rejoice in the gift of Christ, and love one another and Him together, and anticipate the day of the consummation of our longing.

A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem. A psalm of David. I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD." -Psalm 122:1

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children,  including the new bodies he has promised us.  -Romans 8:24

 Quieted,

Sheila