Prioritizing Your Life

Tonight I went to a women's encouragement night at my church called "Pink!"  I found the word that the lady brought to be encouraging and eye opening, so I wanted to synopsis the night and maybe someone here will find it encouraging too :)

As you go into 2013, are you more aware of your problems? Or are you more aware of the Presence of God? So often we focus on our problems that we forget to focus on God and what He wants in our lives.

Life is full of things we have to do; we're mom's, wives, sisters, friends and daughters. We have daily stresses that come into our lives and we get busy getting the house clean, doing chores, helping children learn their spelling words, helping husbands get out the door on time, going to football practice, getting one on one time with friends and family, etc.

In the Bible God calls us to become little children. Sometimes we need to go back to those carefree days when we just would go swinging, without a care in the world, or building sand castles in the sand.  But how do we do that when we are carrying so many adult burdens?

We have to prioritize God's presence. It must become  a huge priority to stop and listen to God. When we prioritize something, we give it rank, position and superiority. Whatever you prioritize in your life will organize your life.

Matt. 6:30-33
If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

1st Peter 5:7
Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you.

 What keeps us down and burdened? 

1. Sins
2. Our marriage
3. Our health
4. Our finances
5. The economy
 And a lot, lot more. Those are just a few of the things that hold us down in life. 

These burdens affect us, our relationships, our attitude, our sleep and even our eating. 

So how do we get rid of these burdens and become carefree, and childlike, like how God wants us to be?

We need to unload our burdens on God. Give each and every burden you're carrying to Him. And when you give them to Him, don't be an Indian giver and take them right back. Leave them at His feet. Cry out to Him and ask Him to help you leave your burdens at His feet. When we leave our burdens with Him, then we're lighter, happier and can move on to be what He has called us to be. We can discover His calling, and His desires for our life. 

There is nothing that can keep us from the Love of Jesus. 

I know this sorta scattered, but I hope it encourages you. I tried to bring it together the best I could...I'm not nearly as eloquent as Pastor Adana was! :)  

Bless each one of you~

 

Attitudes of the Heart

Today was a disaster! Well, not completely...but my attitude was a disaster.

Have you ever had a day where you wake up and think, "Ok, today should be a good day!" And then as soon as your feet hit the floor, things just start going wrong?

Today was one of those days for me. But not only did things go wrong, but my attitude went wrong too. Honestly, us women would like to blame it on lack of sleep, hormones, our children, our husbands, our jobs, our house, or whatever excuse we can come up with. I'm not saying those things can't contribute to our seemingly, "lack of control" but there are always deeper issues underlying that cause our attitudes to flare up in the wrong direction.

For me, today I just kept thinking, "The whole wide world seems against me today!" But in all reality, it was just the course of life and consequences for things I either forgot, had no control over, or didn't even know about. Sometimes we have to stop and think about why these things are happening, figure out what we can do to prevent them and then start actively changing things so these disasters don't continue to happen. One of the biggest things we have to actively change is our thought life. Our thought life rules our world. What we think, is what we are, or will become. So if you're thinking, "I'm so depressed. I'm so frustrated. I'm stressed out!" etc, then you're actively putting those things into place, or reinforcing what is already going on.

I am the queen of a negative thought life. I'm not proud of it either, and I'm trying very hard to change that. (You know to change a habit, it takes 30 days to break it and 40 days to get it set in stone, the change you are trying to bring about). It's not easy. I'm on day 10...of breaking my habit of negative thinking. And I'm also not proud to say that I've failed more often than gaining victory in the past 10 days, but it's not keeping me from trying my best.

So today when my world began to crumble; first a problem with a check I'd written, then the college saying they couldn't register my hubby's classes due to their computer system being messed up tonight, along with not being able to find his military papers showing his home of record as being Texas, and some other issues too, I found myself just thinking negatively, over and over. Then when I finally got home after getting some things settled and figured out, I stopped to think...to think about my thoughts and actions. I realized that as my thought life got more negative, the more negatively I treated people around me, including my loved ones. So I changed my thought life. I began to think, "Ok, everything is really going to be ok. Things are fine. We can get this all figured out!"

Seriously, not joking around, things began immediately to turn around. We found the paper we needed to prove our home of record as being Texas, the testing center at the college found his scores and were able to print them off so he could register for school, my hubby and I started getting along better (not because of him...he's a gem. It was my attitude that was driving a wedge between us) and my evening turned out to be quite pleasant.

So you see, it's all in our thought life. But we must make the choice to think positively! If we don't, then we just increase the negativity in our lives and it not only affects us, but it affects those around us.

In all of this, most importantly, we MUST keep God as the center of our lives. He doesn't expect us to be perfect. He doesn't expect us to always do things just right. What He wants from us, is when we realize we've gone astray, to come to Him, ask for His forgiveness and help, and keep going on. He is always there for us, no matter where we are in life.

God bless each one! Much love!