Our house has two smoke detectors in it – one in the kitchen and one in the hallway near the bedrooms. Kevin and I were performing our semi-annual battery check and could not tell if the smoke detector in the kitchen was malfunctioning or if the batteries were dying. So we did what any logical, well-educated couple would do. We set a fire.
Our house is near Interstate 40, which makes travelling easy for us. We can just hop on for a few miles and get across town, or even head west to Memphis or east to Nashville. But sometimes I get confused about where I am and which way I’m headed. I come up to the interstate and panic as I try to think if I need to head east for two miles or west for two miles.
Sometimes I chuckle because east and west is all a matter of perspective. To my parents who live in Memphis, Jackson is in the east. But to our friends who have moved to Nashville, they have left us behind in the west.
No matter how directly confused I get, I like to think about the forgiveness of God as I travel east and west on the interstate.
Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Stop! Growing with Jesus
That’s the current title of our Sunday School lessons with our middle school girls. We all had a good laugh over the importance of punctuation. Because “Stop! Growing with Jesus” is VERY different than “Stop Growing with Jesus!”
Yesterday’s lesson focused on the importance of listening to God. Just like our friendships are unhealthy when only one person does all the talking, so, too, our relationship with God is unhealthy when we do all the talking.
So we posed this question – How do you think God feels when we do all the talking and never stop to listen to Him?
And one of our girls quickly answered, “He probably just zones us out!”
Annie F. Down’s most recent book, Looking for Lovely: Collecting the Moments that Matter arrived in my mailbox in an envelope full of sequins. Yes, sequins. I was privileged to be part of the book launch team and join an awesome group of early supporters.
The very first words that Annie pens in her foreword read,
Dear friend, I am changed. I am different. I have never been the Annie I am today, and that’s because God has done something new and miraculous in my life.
What a beautiful opening to her book! Praise the Lord that He has miraculously transformed our sinful hearts into hearts that beat for His glory!
Thanks for your post, Renae! There is a great book by Lauren Winner entitled "Mudhouse Sabbath" which speaks to the…
As a child, I memorized the Ten Commandments. But it wasn’t until adulthood that I made connections to why those rules in particular are so important. Last night, I was examining the fourth commandment in particular – the Sabbath Day.
Most of the commands are succint. Exodus 13:13 has three short words, “Do not murder.” But explaining the Sabbath as the fourth command takes up four verses.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work – you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
– Exodus 20:8-11
I’m going to use a couple passages in Scripture to answer a few key questions about the Sabbath to help us better apply it in our lives.
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