Thursday, October 20, 2016

Being Still

Before refrigerators, people used ice houses to preserve their food. Ice houses had thick walls, no windows, and a tightly fitted door. In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the ice houses, and covered with sawdust.
Often the ice would last well into the summer. One man lost a valuable watch while working in an ice house. He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but didn’t find it. His fellow workers also looked, but their efforts, too, proved futile. A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the ice house during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watch. Amazed, the men asked him how he found it. "I closed the door," the boy replied, "lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking."
Often the question is not whether God is speaking, but whether we are being still enough, and quiet enough, to hear.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Turn off "Replay"

A man named Jack was driving on a dark country road one night when he got a flat tire. He saw a cabin in the woods and began to walk towards it. He told himself that the person who answered the door would be angry and irritated for the interruption. In fact, the person would probably harm him. He was probably a truly terrible person. Who else would live out in the woods away from people? Jack convinced himself that the person who lived in the cabin was a menace to society, so when the door opened, Jack punched the man in the nose and ran away.

”All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast”
(Proverbs 15:15)

We take situations and replay them in our minds. As ridiculous as the story above may seem, it isnt too far fetched from what some of us do when we assume and REPLAY a scenario that has never happened in our minds.  We have conversations in our heads with people, and build a case against them, though we don’t really know what they are thinking. We tend to “nurse, curse, and rehearse” stories like Jack.

So, What things do you play in your head all day? What are you meditating on?

Get rid of the “oppressed and wretched” forecasts of your mind and replay the goodness of God in your life!