What are you living for?

Ask any Christian the above question and the response is “Christ”.  That is the right answer, but is it the truthful answer?  I mean seriously, how many Christians are really, truly, completely and whole-heartedly living for Christ?  90% of the Christians reading this know what I mean, you can feel it deep down inside of you.  The other 10% are either living for Christ whole-heartedly, or have their hearts hardened against accepting this feeling.  Which is it?

Why do you get up and go to work each day?  Do you go to work so that you can pay the bills?  Do you dream of being a millionaire?  Are you doing it so that one day you can retire and relax in the knowledge that you will be well-cared for in your old age?  Or do you work simply to provide for your basic living expenses, with no wants for a bigger house, a better car, a holiday somewhere luxurious?  You know that the Bible says that you can’t take it with you….

"But God said to him, 'You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?' – Luke 12:20

What do you look forward to in life?  And I mean really look forward to.  Is it the next party?  Is it the next sports match?  Is it the next Twilight movie?  Is it the next holiday?  Are you living for the next pleasurable fix?  Sure, you have enjoyed life to the full, but how does the earthly pleasure you strived so hard for affect your life in heaven?  Have your earthly pleasures become idols in your life?

Why do you get out of bed in the morning?  Because you have to?  Just to get through the day to move onto the next day?  Are you living a life where you are just going through the motions?  Not striving for anything?  Just going with the flow… day after day after day?  Are you living just to live?

Are you living for fame?  Do you crave to see your face on the cover of People magazine?  Are you living to get your twitter followers over the 1000 mark?  Are you striving to be the name on everyone’s lips, respected and admired by all who encounter you?  Do you know who Paul Morphy is?  He is apparently the Greatest Chess Player of all time (so says a website I visited).  He was born in 1837 and died in 1884.  I can imagine he was quite famous in his day… fame dwindles, in a couple of hundred years who will have heard of Marilyn Monroe?

What about power?  Are you living to command hundreds of people?  To be a mayor, a senator, the president?  What is your motive behind this craving?  With great power comes great responsibility and you need a solid grounding to succeed at the job…

Here is a good one, are you living for revenge?  Do you live to see the downfall of others?  To play with people and manipulate them because you cannot stand them being so happy?

Are you happiest when you are unhappy?  This is going to sound really weird, but do you live to moan and mope around complaining all the time about how “Sucky” your life is?

Are you living to please other people?  Who better to please than to please God?

Lastly, and this is the biggest one… Are you living for knowledge?  Are you studying and gaining knowledge?  Is your goal to become the expert in your field?  How can even a shred more knowledge get you into heaven?  I know a very simple woman.  She is quite slow when it comes to technology.  She never graduated from High School.  She never studied any further after her limited High School career.  She married young and raised her children.  She is an old woman now and I can honestly say I have never met a more loving and giving lady.  She ALWAYS means well in everything she does.  She has a very simple faith, but it is faith all the same and God has protected her from harm throughout her life.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t study if God gave you the brain for it, what I am saying is that it shouldn’t become more important than God.

So what happens when you finally attain that which you are striving for?  How many millionaires are happy with their millions? How many people are finally partied out?  How many famous people wish they would be left alone for one weekend?  How many powerful people are faced with tough decisions and wished it wasn’t their responsibility to make the choice?  How many people get burnt in their old age with no friends after chasing them all away?  How many people actually notice for more than a day what you have sacrificed to please them?  And how many extremely knowledgeable people get Alzheimer’s disease in their old age?

So here is the question again.  What are you living for?

Lonely Places

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. ~ Luke 5:16

If anyone knew what it is like to be surrounded by people all day it was Jesus.  I don’t even know if I could imagine what it would be like to be followed around by hundreds and thousands of people.  Something that Jesus did though was to withdraw to lonely places and pray.

When was the last time you withdrew to a lonely place to pray?  This verse tells us that Jesus did it often.  How often is often? I am inclined to say as often as he needed to.

How often do you need to withdraw to a lonely place to pray?  I am inclined to say that you are not doing it as often as you need to.  I know I am most certainly not.

Something that I have noticed though, is that when I come out of the lonely place and come out of my prayer I feel refreshed and rejuvenated in my heart.

2 minutes sitting away from my computer screen somewhere quiet is all it takes to refocus my mind during a day at work.

5 minutes sitting somewhere quiet with a cup of coffee is all it takes to prepare myself for the day ahead.

And 10 minutes knitting in bed (all by my lonesome self) is all the time I need to pray for the night and day ahead of me.

Can you imagine how powerful your prayer life and spiritual life could become if you just take those extra 5 to 10 minutes to withdraw to a lonely place and pray?

I challenge you to try it twice a day for a week.  5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening – retreat to a quite place and pray.  Then if you want, post the outcome (negative or positive) in a comment here.

You don’t need to pray for people.  You don’t need to pray for anything.  Just talk to God like you would talk to your best friend.  Talk about the day ahead.  Talk about what is bothering you.  Talk about what is going on in your heart.  You may not hear him speak back, but I know that 99% of the time I feel at peace after I have spoken to him, and I believe that peace comes directly from him.

May God Bless All of my readers!

Challenge: Drinking Water (Day 0)

If you haven’t heard of FlyLady yet and you either (a) have children, (b) need to do at least some housework, (c) are not a Born Organized, (d) feel you have lost control of your home life, or (e) All of the above then I recommend you check out the following website:  www.flylady.com

I am in no way connected with FlyLady and I am not receiving any money to post this.  I’ve been fluttering along to FlyLady for a few years now and her methods have helped me stay organized and in control of my home life.  So am just an honest person telling you about something that has helped me (I have never bought any of her products though).

This month FlyLady is encouraging her followers to drink their water.  And I have taken up the challenge in my life.  I went to the this website and used it to calculate how much water I need to drink a day.  It has worked out to 1449ml, so I bought a 1.5litre jug.  I am challenging myself to drink my water on a daily basis and finish that jug of water daily.

I’m also going to report back to you, the reader, every now and then about any changes I notice in myself and my body. 

I want to know though… how many of my readers are going to join me with this challenge?  Are you going to get your family involved too?  Post a comment below if you are in!

Recipe: Cosmopolitan Cocktail

This is a drink recipe for those who are not opposed to alcohol in small quantities.  This is an absolutely delicious and light drink.  You can increase or decrease the alcohol amounts according to your tolerance level, but this quantity works well if you are only drinking one during the course of the evening.
Mark and I made these a week ago instead of going out.  The total price to buy the ingredients (enough to make about 16 of these drinks) was R225-00, where buying 1 of these drinks at a cocktail lounge is about R35-00 - so I'm saving about R20-00 a drink by making them at home.  Naturally we didn’t make all 16 in one night, and still have a lot of the ingredients left over for another time! (so when am I getting visitors?)

For a virgin drink (safe for children):
Replace the Vodka and Triple Sec with Sprite or Lemon Water. 

Ingredients:

• Vodka
• Cranberry / Cherry / Wild Berry Juice (cranberry is the best, but others work alright too)
• Lime juice
• Triple Sec
• Cherries
• Ice to chill

Method:

1. Mix 1 part Vodka to 3 parts cranberry juice in a shaker. (or 1/4 cup vodka, 3/4 cup cranberry juice)
2. Add Ice, a tablespoon of lime juice, a tablespoon of Triple Sec and shake well.
3. Pour out into glasses (strain out ice), add a cherry and an umbrella!

 The meal I served with it will be coming out on my blog at a later date!

Ashleigh’s Diary and In Ashleigh’s Kitchen

Hello Readers,

This is a little announcement that I have started 2 other blogs…

While this blog you are looking at is my primary blog detailing my thoughts and my recipe's, I have started 2 others with more specialized entries:

Ashleigh's Diary - this blog contains information from my day to day life and on going updates of the challenges I present to my readers occasionally on this blog.  While this blog only contains the highlights, Ashleigh's Diary contains information on a daily basis.

In Ashleigh's Kitchen - this blog only contains recipe's.  All recipe's I have posted on this blog too, but In Ashleigh's Kitchen contains the recipe's without the fluff in between (great if you only want to subscribe to recipes.

So feel free to take a look if you want to!

Admirable Character Traits of Disney Princesses (Part 10)

This is the final chapter of the Disney Princess series that I started.  The last princess is Rapunzel from the movie Tangled.

I personally prefer her at the end of the movie with the short brunette hair, but that’s just me…

Rapunzel is unique in that she expresses what most 18 year old girls in the modern world feel.  How many parents or boyfriends have said to their young loves “What do you want? Just tell me what you want!” and the young woman replies with tears in her eyes “I have no idea what I want!”

Rapunzel knew she wanted to see the lanterns, she knew she didn’t want to disappoint her “mother”, she knew she wanted out of her tower, she knew she was scared of the world outside the tower – see the contradictions here?  She was truly a confused teenager.  But she has some amazing character traits that we can learn from her.

1. Mastered her natural talents – she studied and practiced as much as she could in her tower.  She learned to bake, sew, paint, and many other activities.  She was always looking for something to do and she didn’t allow herself to become idle, if she had a talent for something she learned to do it well.
2. Kind – all the Disney Princesses are kind to others, and Rapunzel is no exception.  She is kind to the people around her and even those who are “undesirables” in society.
3. Charismatic – even though she had been starved of human interaction in her tower, she was extremely charismatic and knew how to handle people.  She was able to get people to do what she wanted them to do, but she never abused this ability by getting people to do things that were bad, rather to get people to do good things.
4. Adventurous – she loved the adventure of travelling to see the lights.  Even though she was scared, and showed it at times, it never stopped her from continuing her journey.
5. Adapts quickly – when she left her tower she was shy and a bit jumpy, but she grew and adapted to the outside world quickly and fit right in with the people around her.
6. Overcomes her fears – I think her biggest trait though is her ability to overcome her fears.  During her quest she was afraid of many things, but with internal difficulty she overcomes each fear.  How often are we held back by our fears? But when we overcome them we really move forward in life!

Recipe: Ginger Beer

This recipe comes from my grandmother’s recipe book.  My grandmother was a great homemaker, always providing food and treats for her family.  I remember going to her house for Sunday dinner.  She passed away in 1996 (I think!).  My father took her recipe book.
A little story that I remember from my childhood of this Ginger beer:
My father decided he was going to make it once and we got a big bucket to fill glass coke bottles.  Well, he went to release the pressure from the bottles daily, but one day he couldn’t get it open, so he took a drill to drill a hole in the top of the bottle.  We lived in a long open plan house, so the kitchen was next to the dining room which was next to the living room with no walls dividing the rooms.  My dad was working at the kitchen sink and the TV was on the opposite side of the long room. The bottle of ginger beer exploded spraying the entire room from the kitchen to the TV in the living room!  Everything was sticky with Ginger Beer.  All I remember is my mom saying “I’m taking the dogs for a walk” fetching the lead and disappearing for an hour.  My dad and I started cleaning up, my mom finished the job when she got back.
So below is the 2 recipes in the book.  We make the bottom recipe of the two. next to the recipe it says: Mrs Hawyes, so I am guessing my grandmother got the recipe from a Mrs Hawyes!  Here are the 2 recipe’s that come from the recipe book in their original format.  My conversion of the recipe is below this image.

INGREDIENTS:

• 12 litres cold water
• 9 cups sugar
• 5 heaped teaspoons cream of tarter
• 5 heaped teaspoons tartric acid
• 2 teaspoons dry yeast
• a few raisins
• 2 tablespoons ginger

METHOD:

1. Put sugar in water and stir until dissolved ( I made a half batch in a 9 litre bucket)
2. Add other ingredients and stir a little.
3. Leave to stand for 24 hours before bottling (recipe calls for an enamel or earthenware container, I use plastic cool drink bottles, just release pressure every day or so)
4. Strain through a cloth or oil filter before bottling.

See the pictures below of the process:

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The Ingredients:

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The sugar water in the bucket:

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The mixture before leaving it to stand for 24 hours:

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After bottling (see I recycle!):