Plunging on into the weekend

It’s Friday morning right now, and I am siting at the computer with a cup of lemon tea while writing this post.  I am way behind on reading emails - 751 in my inbox from various forums and groups I am part of.  I’m going to to a quick read / delete this morning and see how far I get with it.

On the bright side I have been able to get parts of my morning routine back on track.  Yesterday and today I woke up, turned the kettle on, turned the washing machine on and packed away the clean dishes.  I’m waiting for the washing machine to finish so I can hang out the laundry before work today.

Today is going to be a busy day.  I need to get to:

• check the post office box,
• pay an account,
• go to a hardware store to buy a door handle for the bathroom door
• Send the assistants a reminder to fill in their claim forms so they will be paid
• Go to the nursery to buy a gift for my previous landlady and return the keys for my previous home.
• Water the garden

And that is just what I can think of on the top of my head.

I must say that I do enjoy busy days because at the end of them I actually feel like I got something done.  The quiet days I seem to mess around doing a little bit of everything and not actually getting anything finished.

God’s Will vs. Relentless Prayer

One of the things which has been happening in my life is that I have found myself in a situation where I need/want direct guidance from God.  The people who know me best (family) advise me to pray and wait for God’s guidance.  The absolutely wonderful Christian people I have met and I have told about my situation in private have either pointed to Bible passages to advise me, or have encouraged me to continue praying and waiting for guidance, and have agreed to pray with/for me too.  Personally, I tend to follow the advice of the people who know me and my situation the best (my mother for example).  However, I also know that God’s timing is perfect and if I were to make a move now then it would be a disaster. 

 

But this got me thinking there is more to prayer than we want to believe, especially prayer requests.

 

I know from past experience that persistent prayer results in God giving me direct guidance (or moving the figurative chess piece for me) at exactly the right moment and in exactly the right way, and it isn’t just my life experiences that say that persistent prayer results in God’s answer to that prayer, it is also written in the Bible in Luke 11:5-9, Luke 18:1-8, John 16:23-24, Philippians 4:6 and Matthew 15:21-28. 

 

I have been reading a book written by Leslie Ludy.  It is called “Set-Apart Feminity”.  I could never put it as eloquently as she does, so I am going to present you with a short excerpt from the book:

When I spent time in Christ’s presence, I had learned how to worship Him, study His Word, let Him speak to me through stories of great Christians, and journal my thoughts, fears, and praises as prayers to Him.  But the idea of wrestling, importunate, persistent prayer was completely foreign to me.  Whenever I had a specific request, concern, or need, I brought it to Christ – once or twice.  Instead of praying with confidence and boldness, I prayed, “Lord, if it is your will, then please do this or that.”  And if no answer came after one or two times of praying, usually I assumed that it wasn’t “His will” to answer, and I let it go.  It even seemed unspiritual to keep pressing the issue with God.  I felt that it was better to just cheerfully accept the lack of response from heaven, rather than act like a pesky child and go back to Him again and again.

But then I started studying what Scripture says about prayer.  And what I found was somewhat shocking…….

…….Instead of assuming that Christ doesn’t desire to answer our prayers when we don’t receive an immediate response, we are to press in with even more persistence, not letting go until our request is granted.

~ Set-Apart Feminity, by Leslie Ludy (excerpt from pages 152, 153 and 155).

I could never have said it any better than this.  It was also mentioned in the book (and this part I am paraphrasing) that if a prayer is not coming from a Christ-centred heart then eventually the person will give up on the prayer request -  that person is not praying according to God’s will.  However, if the prayer is coming from a Christ-centred heart then the person will never give up praying until their request is granted – that person is praying according to God’s will.

 

As Leslie mentioned, many times we give up and assume it wasn’t God’s will.  Or as I have experienced, start looking for the answers ourselves instead of watching, waiting and listening.  It is important to read your Bible to know God’s character, but a person can also read their Bible in such a way that they see the answers they want to see.  We need to rely on God to show us what he wants us to see, and when he wants us to see it.

 

I don’t know about everyone else, but I have decided that I am going to be bold in prayer and silent while listening for God’s response because I know he will show me where he wants me to go as long as I stay focused on him first.

News: Been a while

It’s been some time since I last wrote a post here.  I have finally finished moving everything from my old home to my new home.  Today was the last load.  Now I need to do the final unpacking and it will all be over.

 

There has been a lot going on in my life, but most of it I cannot post about just yet.  Typical isn’t it?

 

There is something very important happening tomorrow, and I am absolutely dying to tell everyone what it is, but my lips have to remain sealed until I inform all the parties concerned.  I have spent the afternoon and evening preparing for it.

 

William and his brother made me a late lunch or early supper today so that I didn’t need to cook and could focus on the preparations for tomorrow.  They made a fire and cooked Boerewors and lamb chops on it.  I am so grateful to have such caring people in my life. 

 

William’s brother even helped me wash dishes and clean the living room this morning.  That really cut the time it would have taken me in half.  And William washed the Mercedes while we were doing this!

 

Our neighbour’s child, Gareth, came to visit us this afternoon.  I have a Nintendo Wii, so we played games on it.  Unfortunately, I had to cut the games short so that I could get to work for tomorrow.

 

Oh, I think I should mentioned that the Spider I mentioned in the previous post is dead.  It took a bit of skill to catch it, even with the vacuum cleaner.

 

William went to see one of the Major’s at the army base on Friday.  It sounds like there is a very good chance that he will be accepted for training.  Which means we won’t have any contact with each other while he does his Basic Training.  He has to go for a second interview and then we will know for sure.

 

That’s the news from me.

 

May God Bless Each of you!

Fell of the horse

I totally fell off the cleaning horse sometime just before Easter break, but today I climbed back onto it.

I was up at 6:10am, 40 minutes later than I wanted to be up by, but at least I was awake and out of bed.  The weather is icy here.  It was -3°C this morning and the weather forecast said we would see a maximum of 13°C - and we are still a month and a half away from the middle of winter.  I think this is going to be one of our coldest winters in years.

I did manage to get a load of laundry washed and hung up (indoors) to dry.  I also packed away the dishes I washed yesterday and made the bed before heading off to work.

During my lunch break I went home and packed up 1 box of stuff from the kitchen cupboards.  For those of you who don't know, I'm moving from my 1 bedroom home into a 2 bedroom home.  I got the keys today so I also went to take a look during my lunch break.  These are the joys of living in a city where it takes 20-30 minutes to travel from one side to the other.  It's a 5-10 minute drive to and from work, and my new home is only a few blocks away from my current home.  I'm so excited, I have such big plans for the place - the first one is to take a bubble bath... a nice long bubble bath!

 

However, I got a nasty surprise while looking in the cupboard - a spider, about 10cm big, with lots of hairs on it’s legs.  I left it alone for now, but it is going to be sucked up by my vacuum cleaner eventually.

 

So this coming weekend is move weekend I hope to take some photograph’s before I officially start the move.  Maybe I’ll post them up here when I have the opportunity.

Challenge: Recharging the batteries

Yesterday morning I slept in and only got out of bed at 7:20am.  I had 30 minutes to shower, dress, feed the pets, pack for work and get to work.  At 8:50am I headed out the door ready to start my day.  I needed the extra time to sleep this morning. BUT…

When I turn the key in the ignition of my car, the engine made a Woo-Woo sound, the gages went crazy, the mileage reset itself and I got nothing.  I try again and the same story happens.  So I phone William – he gives me a long detailed explanation on what is wrong, but doesn’t tell me what I should do to fix it.  So I pretend to listen and eventually say goodbye with instructions to send him the dealership’s phone-number. 

Second round of dumb luck, I haven’t driven the scooter for a couple of day’s and the battery of the scooter is also dead.

I phone my mom to get the dealership’s phone-number from her (since she kept the invoice) and she decides I should rather phone my uncle first.  I get hold of my uncle and he phones the place who installed my alarm.  Long story of phoning back and forth, but the end result is that the people who installed the alarm come to fetch my Ford and drop me off at work.  They replaced the battery and now I have a working car.

So this got me thinking about recharging our personal batteries.  Why is it that we usually end up waiting until we are on the brink of going crazy before we recharge our batteries?  While our endurance may be higher than that of machines, we also need our batteries recharged from time to time and occasionally we also need to go in for repairs.

There are many simple ways throughout the day that we can recharge our batteries.  Some of my favourites are to:

~ Lie flat on my back on the floor in a quiet room for 10 – 15 minutes.
~ Sit quietly in a chair with a cup of tea and not do anything except sit and drink my tea.
~ Read a book in a warm comfy bed in the evenings (or occasionally for a whole Saturday afternoon)
~ Take a warm candle-lit bubble bath.

Unfortunately, my current home doesn’t have a bath tub (only a shower), so I only get to have a bubble bath when I visit my mother.  Luckily, my future home (from the 1st of May) does have a bath tub – so you can guess what will be the first thing I do in my new home!

Question – leave a comment:
What do you do to recharge your batteries?

Challenge:
Do something this week to recharge your batteries!

Pot Challenge

William bought me a set of 3 pots.  I love them!  When William wanted to make supper a few nights ago he accidentally burnt the Tomato Soup - badly!  He didn't want to even think about cleaning up the mess, and it took me 2 days to convince him to just throw out what he could and I would clean the rest of the pot.  That burnt mess was standing on my stove for 2 days!  William behaved like a 10 year old being told to clean his room and I was the mom in the scenario.  Looking back it was quiet funny.

So, after finally throwing out the mess together (he held the packet and I scooped the mess into the packet) he left me to wash the pot.  I soaked it with boiling soapy water for 3 days (adding new boiling water once a day) dreading trying to get the layer of black off the bottom. 

When I washed the dishes today I decided that I would just see how much I could get off in 5 minutes then let it soak over night again.  To my surprise, as I started scrubbing the black stuff started moving in one big mass, and I literally was able to pick the entire chunk of black up in my hand and throw it into the dustbin.  Then the pot washed as though the soup had never been burnt!

This got me thinking about the rest of life.  Sometimes we buck God/world/other, or we dread doing things we have to do, or we are scared of change, or we want to wait for the perfect moment, or we come up with other excuses, but what we really need is to just get our hands dirty for 5 minutes.  We need to face our fears head-on, even if it is in small pieces, and usually we'll find that it wasn't so bad.

Challenge:

Do something today that you have been dreading doing – even if it is only for 5 minutes.

Budgie Stitch

Here is a picture of the new addition to my budgie family.  Her name is Stitch.